Version 5.1 - Aftershock. Things I DISLIKED

[Chxlls]

As someone who is a recent addition to the developer team, I appreciate the honest feedback and at least providing some positives before the negatives. I wanted to make a reply here, as a player first and developer second. With this in mind, please know that I am not speaking on behalf of the development team, or anyone in it, and these are my opinions alone.

I started this game in fighters, and would like to think I have become one of the better snub players on the server in the ~15 months I've been a part of this community. I have enjoyed 5.1 much more so than 5.0, for a variety of reasons. I enjoy the idea that fighters can actually DO something to capital ships in a fleet fight scenario. In 5.0, a single solaris cruiser (see Antonio's videos) or a single competent Battlecruiser player (see Haste during the DTR sieges) made interacting with capital ships as a snub player borderline impossible, outside of stacking 5+ (or more) "Ace" players on bombers with hellfire rocket pods. This would cause a massive disconnect on a fleet level between snub players and capital players, and basically split the fight into two separate battles in a lot of cases.

One of the main goals of patch 5.1 was to increase parity between fighter/bombers and capital ships, hence the changes that were made. I think, to a large degree, that has been a success. I am not much of a capital ship player, I will admit, and that makes me subject to my own biases. But, the balance team knew that this focus on interclass balance was not going to be perfect on the first try, and we hope that in the upcoming patch cycles, we can bring balance even more in line than it is currently.

Since 5.1 has released, the balance team and playtesters have done a large amount of work on improving the interclass balance, especially on the side of cruisers, which got hit the hardest in terms of power level, on top of adding new mechanics to learn. I would like to think that in the upcoming patch, some of the larger issues that you have raised here have been addressed, not just by the balance team (admittedly, the majority of them being snub-focused players) but by our playtesters, many of which are capital ship players themselves. I am not going to go into what specific changes have been made to balance in this post, as that will be coming down the line.

I have played gunboats, cruisers, and battlecruisers on the current patch, and have some videos of them on my YouTube, so I am not speaking entirely from ignorance. And yes, the new mechanics are more challenging to learn and are going to take time to get right from a development perspective. In my opinion, adding depth to ship classes is a good thing, provided that they are still reasonable to learn and understand. I think that the new cruiser mechanics have added some more complexity and character to the class itself, without them being a massive barrier to entry. You're welcome to disagree with me there, as I know some people don't agree with that take.

Keep in mind, also, that the players who are "snub mains" typically have better mechanics than their capital ship player counterparts, given the high skill floor that fighters require to achieve proficiency with them (no offense cap players). It is natural, and also inevitable, that those players would quickly dominate in a world where capital ships are actually both approachable and killable by fighters, which has simply not existed the same way in previous patches. I think the idea of "snub stacks being OP", which is rhetoric that has been prevalent since 5.1's release, is misleading in the sense that those snub players have to, in some form or fashion, be able to pilot and coordinate in snubs effectively in order to dominate in fleet fights. For those of you who think this way, I encourage you to fly a fighter on live and see if it's a OP as you think it is. I would go out on a limb and say you MIGHT back down on that front, ever so slightly. The balance and playtest team have taken steps to improve this inter-class balance and we hope, that with time, we can get Discovery to a point where you can fly any combat ship class you want and feel effective, and that a large group of one ship class isn't overpowering compared to the other classes. We want mixed compositions to feel the best, and I think we are really close to getting there, if not there already.

I hope this didn't come off as some sort of "elitist" snub player rant. Again, I'm replying to this with my "player hat" on and these opinions are mine and mine alone. As a member of the development team, we are positive for the upcoming patch and can only hope that the community can remain positive too. There's also a lot of exciting features coming in the next patch, so stay tuned. If anyone has questions, concerns, or wants to voice their opinion on the state of balance or the game at large, they're free to DM me on Discord, and I would be happy to have a conversation. As always, we appreciate your feedback and we only hope to improve the game for all involved.