Why is PvP so damn difficult?

[Jack_Henderson]

That doesn't mean discovery shouldn't have noob tubes, and old sidewidners were a great system for that where you had to give up a gun to use a missile, something a vet would never do and a noob would always do. CMs worked fine enough, sidewinders had balanced stats and they hit about 1/3rd of the time and with proper manouvers you could dodge some of them. I remember fights with and against IMG in the Taus, all of them had old sidewinders or firestalkers and nobody complained, it was a great "shortcut" without breaking anything for the aces. If anything, we need more additions like that one. Small shortcuts are fine, as long as they're not 400ms unCMable undodgeable missiles.

This.
I agree with every point.

I would immediately go back to that version where even an inexperienced player could at some point contribute a little, while not really competing on the same level. That's fair: the good do still win, but the bad can at least play the same part of the game without being as effective an opponent as a cow in a slaughterhouse - with the same amount of "fun" attached.

Most people I have come into contact with by leading a newbie faction could never hit hull and damage superior players. Shield hits, possible. Hull, pactically never in any meaningful form. I would say that frustration about this inability to be useful has been the constant problem for many years - speaking from the pov of new players on Disco who I met.

Missiles helped, and I am in favour of them. And before I get flamed again, or vets log Sidewinder groups for me specifically to prove something: I am not saying that the current Sidewinders are fine. They are not. But the concept of tracking missiles that are useful is - in my opinion - a necessary "small shortcut", as Antonio pointed out.

There's not enough newbies for other newbies to kill, they only get slaughtered by vets. If the newbies try to win by numbers, they get stigmatized for being gankers. But, for some reason, the vets will never get stigmatized for seal-clubbing.

Also full agreement.

The group of snub-pvpers who initiate, organise or just log for snub pvp has become so small that whenever I log for a fight, I can almost guarantee to be confronted with at least a few of the group of very good players. No attack there against anybody, you are also just playing the game like I do.

However, with a pool that small and filled with quite a lot of very powerful sharks, the small fish will be gone fast. And that's where we are, imo, at the moment in Disco snub pvp. Too few small fish with too little chances to ever even become bigger because frustration deters even getting to the stage of "let's become better, I can do this."

Furthermore, the new 2-hour-death-rule sucks. It punishes those who are bad and makes losing fights even more painful by adding unnecessary punishment. It discourages the attitude that I tried to instill in new members "just throw yourself into every fight you see". I even see it in myself. I avoid fights when I know that dying would kill off what I want to do afterwards by 2 hour rule. Revert that one, asap. It does not add anything, but discourages a healthy "just go for it even if you explode" attitude to pvp.

If the newbie doesn't even drop the vet's shield, the newbie won't have fun, but if he does any damage, if he makes at least a small contribution to the fight, that is when everything changes. Players who feel useless will quit, players who feel useful will stay.

That's what I meant when I said that pvp balancing needs to make snub pvp more inclusive so that more people actually do it, more newbies are in the pool and stay in the pool, and less players just go "ye, I'm shit, won't do it, is no fun. I'll just trade (and then leave silently when pvp becomes the real currency)".

Of course many veterans and likely most aces likely do not care for those who "are not determined enough to actually put effort into it", but even those should realize that a full arena is better than an empty one, and that the good, big fights in the past were good and big because more players actually participated in them.