Just a question out there to all you GSF pilots. It seems like discussion in the forums about GSF is slowly dying down. I wonder, has it been so long since any update to GSF that there really is nothing more to say about it? Everything that can be said about play style, builds, maps, queues, etc. has already been said? All the debates have been sufficiently argued that there is nothing more to add on either side? I feel like GSF is getting in need of something new, anything new. New ship, new map.... anything... just to get people talking and thinking again.

Anyone else noticing this or feeling this way?

Just a question out there to all you GSF pilots. It seems like discussion in the forums about GSF is slowly dying down. I wonder, has it been so long since any update to GSF that there really is nothing more to say about it? Everything that can be said about play style, builds, maps, queues, etc. has already been said? All the debates have been sufficiently argued that there is nothing more to add on either side? I feel like GSF is getting in need of something new, anything new. New ship, new map.... anything... just to get people talking and thinking again.

 

Anyone else noticing this or feeling this way?

I definitely think this is true. Those who base their opinions on data and analysis have been convinced and/or reached general consensus of what changes are and are not needed, both for veteran level enjoyment and for improving accessibility for new pilots.

Those who continue to voice outlier or biased opinions will do so regardless of what is said to them. So there really isn't any more point in discussion.

I used to be a prolific poster on this forum. Nowadays, I try to only post if it is to talk about "for fun" builds, ask crazy hypothetical questions (for entertainment, not to sway devs), or to help people find others to fly with.

All that being said, minutes ago, BioWare announced the cancellation of Shadow Realms development, and they said explicitly that the majority of BioWare Austin would be refocusing on SWTOR!

This means the game at large will have more resources available, which increases the chance (but not certainty) that GSF may get some love. Until we hear differently, we can begin to hope again--I do not think the leaked roadmap from the last cantina event is necessarily valid anymore--hence why it has not yet been officially released. More details are due in the "coming weeks".

For now, the best thing you can do is to queue as much as possible, try and get others queuing, and keep your local GSF chat channels a positive and encouraging place. Our ability to save GSF is gated by our ability to help others love it as much as we do.

Nemarus said it best. I do feel it's worth talking about cool ideas still, whether there are devs listening or not, because it's interesting to talk about the game. There are limits to what we can plumb, however, and I don't think we'll see a shift in the meta until there are balance changes.

What there's still just as much of as before on the forums:

> Cool ideas

> Events

> Guides

What there's less of:

> Helpful Debate

> Harmful Debate

> Balance QQ

> Foodships

Losing a lot of the harmful debate and balance QQ was nice. The lack of foodship tears is likely a combination of there being less SWTOR players who haven't played it, which is good and bad. Losing the helpful debate is mostly neutral- there aren't that many open questions, and the few that are there are niche. Like, that type 3 gunship build that Tsukiyami swears by- that could be decent, but even if it is, it doesn't shift the meta. Not like if someone found out viable builds for the ships that don't really have any, or something.

I do think we'll see new stuff, though- and hopefully well balanced new stuff.

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/article/20150209

When we got the preview of this at PAX, it was underwhelming. Now it's on the website almost unchanged.

No GSF enhancements listed.

This seems like a good place for me to rant then

In Verain's other thread, he wanted to decrease the DPS or increase the ROF of BLC. Here is my counter-argument. The two pilots who did 170k+ damage in a T2 scout both did it with QLC and not BLC. So decreasing BLC's DPS may be irrelevant to some aces, and ROF increase may not bother them even if they switch to BLC (since they like QLC which has a higher ROF). There is also a certain ace who gets 30+ kills in a Blackbolt, so similar arguments apply to him.

What about the top scout aces who prefer BLC? They can probably switch to QLC and adapt... I assume part of the reason they get to the top is that they are adaptable... this is of course just my wild assumption. In the end, the BLC nerf is more likely to hurt average or above average players. At these levels, scouts are not clearly OP compared to gunships.

This seems like a good place for me to rant then

 

In Verain's other thread, he wanted to decrease the DPS or increase the ROF of BLC. Here is my counter-argument. The two pilots who did 170k+ damage in a T2 scout both did it with QLC and not BLC. So decreasing BLC's DPS may be irrelevant to some aces, and ROF increase may not bother them even if they switch to BLC (since they like QLC which has a higher ROF). There is also a certain ace who gets 30+ kills in a Blackbolt, so similar arguments apply to him.

 

What about the top scout aces who prefer BLC? They can probably switch to QLC and adapt... I assume part of the reason they get to the top is that they are adaptable... this is of course just my wild assumption. In the end, the BLC nerf is more likely to hurt average or above average players. At these levels, scouts are not clearly OP compared to gunships.

IT DOESN'T MATTER. Get over yourselves. The devs haven't read this forum in months. And if suddenly, magically, some intern was given permission to do a balance pass on GSF, he would not come to this thread of all places for ideas.

That would be the extent of my reply, but since you mentioned me specifically...I am the ace who gets 30+ kills in a Blackbolt, using TT and Wingman. And I can say 30 kills has nothing to do with MLC, and everything to do with Damage Overcharge and me being on a team of scrubs against a team of moderates.

That team setup (1 elite + 7 scrubs vs. 8 moderates) will always yield crazy high numbers from the elite, regardless of what he is flying. That's how I also did 140k damage and 27 kills in a *Rampart*. Deathmatch records are the last thing to judge components by, because all of those records are from very contrived scenarios.

The problem with BLC's is that they are utterly dominant under a satellite--they have been since launch. Undersat fighting is all about high angle shots in brief windows of opportunity--exactly what BLC's are great at. As long as that is the case, undersat fighting is dominated by Flashfires > Condors > Quarrels > everything else. All other lasers have no chance against those. Only mines slow them down.

Reducing the burstiness of BLC's is not going to break the game. Nor is it going to fix the game. The best and most plausible balance will come from a broad and modest set of numerical adjustments to a variety of components (and hopefully the Strike chassis). But that has been argued to *death*. Let it go. Get out of the forum. Go play, and teach someone else how to. That will fix GSF far more than arguing here.

You forgot one thing Nemarus.

Buy GSF themed crap on the cartel market. That is after all, the only revenue that their bean-counters can prove is related to GSF.

Cartel ships for example.

To the OP, yeah, the theorycraft is pretty much stable and all the fundamentals are agreed on. Even the less clear stuff, like where perfect tuning for scout burst DPS lies and how to get there, isn't really as contentious as it might seem in posts discussing it. For balance changes that could be done, there are multiple ways to get to a given end state. We often have personal preferences on how to get there, sometimes very strong ones, but in the end we all pretty much agree on what balance would look like in an ideal world. The core of GSF fans is a pretty tight community, and in general our interests are in improved gameplay and growing the community.

Gameplay improvements are mostly in Bioware's court at this point, and they almost certainly know what the issues are. It's just a matter of if or when they have the resources to work on GSF where it falls on their development priority list.

Community wise, GSFers are a fairly small group, but we do try to grow the community by helping newcomers out to the limited extent that we can, and also try to have events to concentrate population enough for stronger competition, faster queue times, or sometimes just to have a slightly different gameplay experience (stock night, strike night, super serious, etc.).

The bugs from 3.0 were a big event on the forums because they were the first change to GSF that had happened in quite a while.

Until the devs are a bit more active on GSF, this forum is probably mostly going to be a bit slow and focused on community events.

Well, that brightened up the room!

Here's a couple more ideas. Increase the damage from Heavy Laser. It is already good, but buff it to help the T1 and T2 strike. Bombers would benefit, too. It shouldn't matter to the T2 gunship.

Now a crazier idea. Let the T1 strike fire both primary weapons at the same time, and allow both slots to be the same type, while keeping the rate of fire of each weapon (so the blaster power pool depletes in half the time). This is a bit like the fire-link in the X-wing series, except the rate of fire part. So on the stock strike, RLC would still be the default. Press 1 to switch to HLC. Press 1 for both. Press 1 to cycle back to RLC. And so on. I would upgrade to double HLC, but other builds would be fun to try. HLC + Ion (used separately) would still be viable. The magazine choices would be more interesting as well.

The T2 strike would fire both secondaries, e.g., quadruple-volley clusters, or a pair of protons like Luke had. Or a cluster and a concussion at the same time.

That would more than fix those two strikes!

What part about this thread was like "lets discuss strike buffs"?

Also, heavy laser is probably good enough. It's one of the few lasers that feels correct.

I changed off of sab probe and then back for a blackbolt, and sure enough the enemy ships were wiggling and turning when hit. So THAT bug is still there....

But yes, fixing the bugs would be huge. Sab probe tier 5 snare breaks sab probe, 3rd seeker mine not deployable if talented (broken from 3.0, one of the last standing of that bugpatch), ion railgun t5 has text from summer (55% snare 12 sec, 65% regen reduc 6 sec) and functionality from spring (40% snare 6 sec, 100% regen stop 6 sec), ion missile ninjanerfed (may not be bug), EMP field has tooltip from summer and functionality from spring (claims much larger radius than it is, one of those is a bug), plasma railgun and other dots often break when trying to state the time that the damage is dealt over "6 seconds" became " <<1 seconds" and no longer prints, nor does the rest of the text), maybe some others.

In fairness, repair drone's 3.0 breakage DID get fixed with the last minipatch, a very strong repair for us.

I'm not convinced they fixed that one on purpose. There wasn't a patch note.

If haste effects any functions in game it would be big news. Thus far that has never happened. It did begin effecting tooltips out of game.

When you are in game, I'm fairly certain "you" are replaced with the ship. The XML actually specifies that all the moves are effected by haste and other stats to the engine, so the fact that this has never happens presumably means that "your gear" is replaced by a set that is related exactly to your ship choice and nothing you are wearing in the ground game. Just a guess as to the internals based on which bugs we have and have not seen yet