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Star Wars space combat has always been about dog fights X-wings versus Tie fighters. The only way to get people play SF is to go back to basics. REMOVE missles. REMOVE sniper ships. Go for pure dog fighting. At the moment I try to dog fight, but it's always ruined by some coward in a sniper ship shooting me down while i'm engaged in honourable battle. Save SF NOW, go pure dog fighting and nothing else!
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Hate to say this, however if you ever played X-wing, or Tie Fighter PC games Missiles were an important aspect of Dogfighting. Because of this I think your incorrect on your comments referring to missiles. More proof of this is in Episode 2, when Obi-Won tracks Jango Fett to Genosis. Fett shoots Missiles and Sciesmic charges at him (proof for bombers is there as well).

 

GSF isn't a mini game completely based on Dogfighting it was built on a rock-paper-scissor. Each ship is based to beat something else. Bomber>scouts, Scouts>GS's, GS's>bombers. The difference now is Strikes are now able to kill efficiently, where prior to 5.5 you'd have been better flying one of the other ship types.

Edited by Toraak
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GSF isn't a mini game completely based on Dogfighting it was built on a rock-paper-scissor. Each ship is based to beat something else. Bomber>scouts, Scouts>GS's, GS's>bombers. The difference now is Strikes are now able to kill efficiently, where prior to 5.5 you'd have been better flying one of the other ship types.

 

Why did you stop there, you forgot to add fighters under the new patch to your >'s:

 

Fighter>Bomber, Fighter>GS and Fighter>Scout.

To follow your Rock/Scissors/Paper analogy before 5.5 we did have that as no-one played fighter much.

But now we have Rock/Scissors/Paper/Nuke, where Nuke beats everything.

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Why did you stop there, you forgot to add fighters under the new patch to your >'s:

 

Fighter>Bomber, Fighter>GS and Fighter>Scout.

To follow your Rock/Scissors/Paper analogy before 5.5 we did have that as no-one played fighter much.

But now we have Rock/Scissors/Paper/Nuke, where Nuke beats everything.

 

Except GS can easily beat SF, as can a scout. Fighter>bomber, and GS>SF. I would Disagree with your Fighter>Scout however. That would only depend on the scout pilot. I know many scout pilots that would wreck SF's.

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Perhaps we could try something fresh...everyone gets the same ship with the same equipment, no missles and weird special abilities just blasters and pilot skill. I accept your point that SW does have some missles in the movies, but I feel most people still want pure dog fighting with blasters. Naturally the existing GSF players who are comfortable in their dominant position would hate a level playing field because then they might actually lose...
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Perhaps we could try something fresh...everyone gets the same ship with the same equipment, no missles and weird special abilities just blasters and pilot skill. I accept your point that SW does have some missles in the movies, but I feel most people still want pure dog fighting with blasters. Naturally the existing GSF players who are comfortable in their dominant position would hate a level playing field because then they might actually lose...

 

Blaster accuracy is a good contender for the GSF skill that new and intermediate players struggle the most with. The reason that gunships, bombers, and more recently strikes have been so popular is that they have secondary weapons that constitute a significant portion of their damage potential and do not require as much gunnery skill from the player.

 

You wouldn't be leveling the playing field for newer players. You'd be handing the experienced players a gigantic bonus for having mastered gunnery as it exists in GSF. All of the components that help less skilled players compensate for their lack of skill are the ones that you're asking for the removal of.

 

It would be like banning training wheels in a bicycle race for all ages. It wouldn't make it more fair for the beginners, it would punish them for having not developed as much skill as people who started learning at an earlier date.

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Dear OP,

 

I have been in many dog fighting situations and its not that thrilling as the match in total. When you actually have a 1 vs 1 it can become quite boring. I mean you keep on looping, flying in circles because as long as one of you does something different like fly forward a bit, the other one will use it right away.

 

Such dog fights are not what GSF should be about. Its just like PVE you have melee, you have rdps, tanks..... different roles, different ways of playing/fighting. This makes the match even more interesting rather than to fly around in circles with 1 enemy targeted.

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Of all the maps, Iokath TDM is very friendly to dogfighting. In my opinion anyway. Unlike Lost Shipyards TDM, where the objects and LOS opportunities favor gunship sniping, I find the debris in Iokath to be perfect for strikes. Yes, of course, there are still places for gunships to hide and snipe, there are still places for people to make dronecarrier nests, but after 8 months of playing it I think it was designed to be more strike friendly... arguably also the T2 battlescout which is also engineered for dogfighting.

 

Rather than removing valid play styles and removing choices, why don’t you advocate for custom match lobbies like Despon has posted about frequently, or a new game mode like an escort style match?

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Dear OP,

 

I have been in many dog fighting situations and its not that thrilling as the match in total. When you actually have a 1 vs 1 it can become quite boring. I mean you keep on looping, flying in circles because as long as one of you does something different like fly forward a bit, the other one will use it right away. .

 

I can attest to this. Every time I get into a 1v1 dogfight situation it just ends up being an endless loop. I'd say a good portion of my recent deaths are because I got tired of looping for 2 minutes and decided to just say screw it and take the death or because another enemy came along and took me out while I was caught in the loop.

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So OP, I too have posted in the past about how I wish there was more "dogfighting" in the game but the more I've thought about it, the more I question what that really means. If by dogfighting, you mean ship-to-ship combat, then there are quite a few examples of that in canon and of those, some can be replicated in-game. If by dogfighting you mean individual starfighters in a furball circling each other, well, that doesn't really happen in the movies much, but the endless turn fights happened in SWG and they sometimes happen in GSF as well, and like Merovejec posted, aren't terribly exciting.

 

If you're talking about canon, i.e. the movies, what "dogfighting" was there, really?

 

Ep. 1: there were droid trade federation ships attacking the Queen's vessel, and there were Naboo starfighters attacking the TF station. Neither of those scenes had a lot of ship-to-ship fights the way you probably mean. In fact, the naboo fighters were largely overrun by the droid fighter swarms.

Ep. 2: I guess you could call the chase in the Geonosian asteroid field between Jango and Obi-Wan a dogfight, sort of. The KSE Firespray and the Delta-2 Aethersprite were the ships in question. The Firespray was a space superiority fighter as portrayed in Star Wars Galaxies, but in the movies it obviously could hold multiple crew and had a cargo area. Maybe its a T2 Strike in this game? The Aethersprite is classified as an interceptor (definitely a scout in our game.) Anyway, we can and do have fights between the more nimble type 2 battlescout and Strikes. They are often resolved in favor of the battlescout, but that gap is closing. As an aside, the Firespray was obviously able to beat the Aethersprite head on in firepower, and Kenobi had to resort to deception to evade Fett.

Ep. 3: The opening scene with Obi-Wan and Anakin in Eta-2-Actis interceptors and the clone pilots in ARC-170s is really a covert boarding scenario with the ARCs providing escort. Again, not truly dogfighting as the ARCs are quite susceptible to swarms of droid fighters. Either way, the ARC-170 had a gunner turret that could hit aft targets. We don't have an analog in game. And the Jedi's ships, the Eta-2's, they were focused on dealing with the buzzdroids and getting to the capital ship, not engaging the droid fighters (much to Anakin's objection.)

Solo: not much dogfighting here. The Millenium Falcon being chased by TIEs while doing the Kessel Run doesn't count.

Rogue One (R1): This movie probably had most on and off screen dogfighting in the whole series (IMO, it was the best depiction of a space battle in any movie I've ever seen) between the Rebel fleet and the Imperial fleet over Scarif.

Ep. 4: The Falcon escaping from the Death Star and being pursued by TIEs, and the X-wings attacking the death star. Both of these scenarios don't really have any direct comparison in game, however there is some ship-to-ship combat between the TIEs that were scrambled to defend the death star and the x-wings not making a trench run. I'm thinking of the scene where Wedge (Red Two) destroys a TIE on Luke's (Red Five's) tail, or when a TIE is chasing Biggs (Red Three) and Luke comes in to kill it. I'm not sure if the nimble, unshielded, standard TIE Fighter qualifies as more of a T1 scout in this game or a T1 strike using charged plating (which you should never do) and its system ability perma-disabled, stuck on RFLs. In any event, what we do see can be played out in game right now. I've had plenty of instances where I am engaged against, say, a scout, or even another strike, and one of that enemy's friends comes in and takes me out. I was in a Iokath TDM against Drako's premade and I lost count of the number of times I tried to pursue Drako only to be taken out by Verain or Skell: all four of us were in strike fighters for that match. You can't get much more canonical than that experience, apparently!

Ep. 5: The Falcon running away from pursuing TIEs in the asteroid field after escaping Hoth. Again, not much dogfighting there. It's just like in Solo and in Ep. 4 escaping the DS. If the gunship's rail gun was separately controlled from the pilot of the ship by another player, and the gunship could move, maybe it would be like the Falcon … but its not like Leia got into one of the gunner's chairs to fend off pursuing TIEs anyway.

Ep. 6: We get a fair amount of dogfighting scenes in the battle against the second death star, and this movie probably has the most of the OT since the fleets directly engage each other, but of course has a lot of capital ship involvement also and is really just distraction until the DS's shield is brought down and the real assault begins.

Ep. 7: We get a fair amount of atmospheric dogfighting once the Resistance arrives on Takodana and again when they are attacking Starkiller Base, and these fights are relatively free of capital ships, FWIW. However, the fight on Takodana is mostly the Resistance decimating the First Order ground forces with airstrikes. The fight at Starkiller Base is more like the first DS battle in Ep. 4 where the dogfights are secondary to the main objective of the trench run.

Ep. 8: There is some dogfighting as the Resistance bombers' escorting fighters engage First Order TIEs, with the primary objective being to take out the FO Dreadnaught.

 

 

As you can see in the spoiler tag, there are a few examples in the movies to look at. While we don't have the same battle objectives like there are in the movies (escorts, escapes, attacking capital ships or huge relatively stationary targets) we do have one mode (Domination, DOM) very objective oriented. DOM doesn't have larger ships like corvettes and cap ships that were clearly involved in the fights portrayed in R1 and Ep. 6, or "hard target" objectives to go after like a Death Star exhaust port or a Starkiller Base thermal oscillator. The best translation of a corvette or cap ship turret could arguably be gunships and their railguns. To that end, using gunships to attack enemy vessels coming to a friendly satellite from a distance, denying them access to the area; using bombers to drop ordnance on top of ships defending an enemy satellite; and using various scouts and strikes to escort and support those vessels between satellites … I mean, that seems about as close to the movies as we can get with what we have.

 

Again, if its dogfighting, meaning ship-to-ship combat, you are looking for, like the encounters in the spoiler tag, I think on-the-node fights in DOM, and Iokath TDM are fairly amenable to that in-game. If that's not good enough for you, then the answer is new game modes … not removal of whole ship classes.

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. The Firespray was a space superiority fighter as portrayed in Star Wars Galaxies, but in the movies it obviously could hold multiple crew and had a cargo area. Maybe its a T2 Strike in this game?

 

Given the Firespray's size, and ordinance, including mines, I would argue that it's a T3 bomber (with Quads, Concussion Missiles, Concussion Mines, and Power Dive with turning rate). :cool:

Edited by HeatRacer
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  • 3 weeks later...

I can tell you, you can have all the same exact ships, and there still would be separation between people who can fly and those that cant fly that well.

 

Ace and novice pilot in a fresh, unupgraded ship, would still = dead novice.

 

Same as if they were fully upgraded with same abilities applied.

 

You just have to work at it like the rest of us have.

 

There is no fixing of disparity in skill. Only time training could close that gap.

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I shot what ever is nearest me. I was told one time that i was 'focusing' a dude. He made a big stink in gsf chat. He later whispered me, i was right. That he was trying to kill me, and that is the reason he was killed so much.

 

My tactic is to kill the closest target.

 

I dont focus anyone, unless i get shot by a gs, then i go after the gs first.

 

I dont pay attention to much to names

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I shot what ever is nearest me. I was told one time that i was 'focusing' a dude. He made a big stink in gsf chat. He later whispered me, i was right. That he was trying to kill me, and that is the reason he was killed so much.

 

My tactic is to kill the closest target.

 

I dont focus anyone, unless i get shot by a gs, then i go after the gs first.

 

I dont pay attention to much to names

 

+1 to what you said, except... I don't play enough anymore to be good enough that people complain about/to me. Also, my tactic is slightly different. I don't try to kill the closest target. I try to kill the closest gunship. Luckily for my enemies, I am an okay-not-great pilot. Maybe I'm a pretty good Blackbolt pilot though.

 

P.S. I recommend the Blackbolt for all your gunship hunting needs.

Edited by Ymris
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  • 2 weeks later...

The question is really, do you want new players for GSF?

 

My experience is basically, you try to have fun and just die, die, die then stop playing forever. Are the veterans not bored fighting the same people all the time. What % of SWTOR player base play GSF?

 

If no one is willing to change the game to help new players have fun without being killed every few seconds by veterans camping the spawn points and hogging the power ups then an unranked, everyone flies the same ship version, and a ranked upgradable ship, as it is now, option seems the best solution; the best of both worlds.

 

I agree that veteran pilots might win when everyone has the same ship, but eventually new players will learn and if they know from the outset that no one has an advantage the opportunity is there.

 

I think this would bring new blood into the stale "all the usual suspects" GSF

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The question is really, do you want new players for GSF?

 

My experience is basically, you try to have fun and just die, die, die then stop playing forever. Are the veterans not bored fighting the same people all the time. What % of SWTOR player base play GSF?

 

If no one is willing to change the game to help new players have fun without being killed every few seconds by veterans camping the spawn points and hogging the power ups then an unranked, everyone flies the same ship version, and a ranked upgradable ship, as it is now, option seems the best solution; the best of both worlds.

 

I agree that veteran pilots might win when everyone has the same ship, but eventually new players will learn and if they know from the outset that no one has an advantage the opportunity is there.

 

I think this would bring new blood into the stale "all the usual suspects" GSF

 

Of course we want new players for GSF.

 

1.) The stock starter ships are even more viable than they ever were before. The Intro to Starfighter and Intro to Conquest one time missions for a character award enough fleet and ship req to buy additional meta ships. A couple of matches and you can have a bar equivalent to a veteran, in terms of choice of viable meta ships.

2.) 5.9.2 will introduce cross-faction queuing and improved matchmaking … premades will be evenly distributed if there are only two groups per 16 players in the queue, and veterans solo-queueing will be more even as well.

3.) It's not difficult to upgrade a ship any more. Its far less taxing than kitting your character in full 248s with 240 augments, and you earn UC and CXP and Conquest to boot.

4.) "Hogging the power ups"? Are you serious? Knowledge of Damage Overcharge locations, map control, is a key learning point for team deathmatch. Well timed use of DOs can turn the tide of a battle. I mean, if I'm on a repair bomber protecting a nest and a DO spawns nearby, I'll absolutely call it out to the group, its not like I need it. You need to learn where the DOs are and go after them. I haven't seen a map of the DOs in Iokath yet, but a map is certainly out there for the other two TDM maps.

 

There have been a lot of changes already and more coming. I don't think a major overhaul of gameplay mechanics is needed, at least the way most people conceive "major overhaul." An improved tutorial would help tremendously, but that's a pipe dream right now. A custom GSF lobby, where veteran players could take novices "under their wing" and teach them skills, would also help tremendously. I'd like to believe that with "custom" ground pvp matches literally around the corner, custom GSF matches aren't too far away. Until that time, there is the GSF discord and Despon's GSF School videos. Its all I can reasonably expect from a skeleton dev team these days. I don't know how many people Bret has to help him, but I can't imagine its a ton.

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TBH I'm not interested in learning about how to build a ship, I just want to fly about and have fun shooting things and being shot at. All the tactical/strategy nuances are for dedicated players. I'm a casual player who just wants 10 mins of fun flying about. I'm sure all the veterans will shout noob etc, but TBH I'd rather be good at my job in RL than an expert at a game - i dont get paid to play this. I play to relax and have a bit of fun, which seems incompatible with the OMG you must study this and play 5 hours a day of SWTOR is pointless attitude. I log on play for an hour then do something else.
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TBH I'm not interested in learning about how to build a ship, I just want to fly about and have fun shooting things and being shot at. All the tactical/strategy nuances are for dedicated players. I'm a casual player who just wants 10 mins of fun flying about. I'm sure all the veterans will shout noob etc, but TBH I'd rather be good at my job in RL than an expert at a game - i dont get paid to play this. I play to relax and have a bit of fun, which seems incompatible with the OMG you must study this and play 5 hours a day of SWTOR is pointless attitude. I log on play for an hour then do something else.

 

Nobody is saying you can't play GSF as a casual. In fact I think that can be a good thing. With that being said, it will make your enjoyment of GSF increase if you get a basic understanding of the ship builds of what you like to fly the most. It doesn't take long to get a ship build that will work for you, so even if you do fly casually you can still master what you fly even if you only fly 1-2 matches every few days.

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TBH I'm not interested in learning about how to build a ship, I just want to fly about and have fun shooting things and being shot at. All the tactical/strategy nuances are for dedicated players. I'm a casual player who just wants 10 mins of fun flying about. I'm sure all the veterans will shout noob etc, but TBH I'd rather be good at my job in RL than an expert at a game - i dont get paid to play this. I play to relax and have a bit of fun, which seems incompatible with the OMG you must study this and play 5 hours a day of SWTOR is pointless attitude. I log on play for an hour then do something else.

 

You could pretty much say that about just about anything in the game.

TBH I'm not interested in learning about how to beat Izax, I just want to run around and swing my lightsaber.

 

TBH I'm not interested in learning about how to complete the heroic space on-rails missions, I just want to do barrel rolls and shoot stuff.

 

TBH I'm not interested in learning about how to make credits, I just want to craft level 5 gear all day.

 

I mean, in general, dumbing down systems has never gone well for a game, whether its a mini game within a larger mmo or the whole mmo itself. Historically it never leads to a sustained increase in playerbase size, and it usually upsets the dedicated fans leading to larger than average attrition. Tactics and strategy aren't for just for hard core players, they are for anyone who wants to improve. You may be an exception, but I think an hour of wiping multiple times on a difficult boss without learning anything about the encounter usually isn't as fun as an hour of progressing, learning, improving, and finally taking the boss down, in spite of multiple wipes. There's probably millions of mobile games that you can just sit down and play if you like, but this game rewards practice. If you want to shoot other people to actually get them to blow up and not get shot down yourself, its going to require practice.

 

I mean, I guess you could just spend ten minutes pedaling on a stationary bike, or you could, you know, learn how to balance on a real bike, switch gears, use hand brakes, etc. It does require you to step outside of your comfort zone though. It requires you to practice, and sometimes you're going to fall on your face or get some road rash.

 

Regardless, supporting a custom GSF environment would give you the freedom to spend "10 mins of fun flying about," achieving not only your goals but those of other pilots as well.

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TBH I'm not interested in learning about how to build a ship, I just want to fly about and have fun shooting things and being shot at. All the tactical/strategy nuances are for dedicated players. I'm a casual player who just wants 10 mins of fun flying about. I'm sure all the veterans will shout noob etc, but TBH I'd rather be good at my job in RL than an expert at a game - i dont get paid to play this. I play to relax and have a bit of fun, which seems incompatible with the OMG you must study this and play 5 hours a day of SWTOR is pointless attitude. I log on play for an hour then do something else.

 

Tactics and strategy are for everyone. Playing against people who are so much more advanced that it's not even funny is... not.

 

There's nothing wrong with the tactical depth of the game. I'm betting the issue is that you and most other newbies have is that your teams are full of dead weight (either farmers or complete newbies), and the other team is full of people who at least know how to lock a protorp or aim a railgun. I can beat most of the pubs on Satele Shan 1v1.5/2, but that's because I've spent literally months practicing, and they... mostly play against the imps we got from Shadowlands.

 

My guild used to run premades a lot. There was another guild which also did this, but they only ever flew bombers and tended to die horribly in TDM. We basically fell apart and stopped flying as a group, and they... learned to fly stuff besides bombers?

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  • 5 months later...
GSF should be more like Star Wars Galaxies or Eve Online, where you had to work hard to build your own ships and craft parts to go with it, GSF is just a sorry excuse.

 

Even after the fixes to starship components and balances after the Nova Orion update, pvp was still never as balanced as it is here, and objective pvp didn't really exist until the GCW invasions, which was essentially only one game mode and could be done without resistance/interference from the opposite faction. They also never had custom match lobbies which we now have. Just taking off your rose colored glasses for a moment.

 

I'd love to see in GSF another type of game mode, more customizations for player ships, and (pie-in-the-sky wall-of-crazy) a PVE mini game, but that will require more people to show an interest.

Edited by phalczen
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