Godslayer Balance Essay

[L1ght]

When only missiles do damage, and a mine has a chance to insta kill you. I can see the fun in that.

That is because, as is evident from the video, the Gunboat is very significantly misplaying the matchup, and winning anyways. If this Gunboat played aggressively and charged the snub, or perhaps did a little bit of sudden-stopping-and-core-dumping (that's also a great moment to drop a mine with higher velocity towards the snub), Mort would be getting absolute crushed. Despite the fact that Mort is likely playing the matchup significantly better than the Gunboat, the Gunboat still wins, which kind of proves the point people are trying to make.

My comment wasn't on who should win. The gameplay is incredibly boring.

My biggest gripe is still that there is no real good source of information on what guns are supposed to do. What mechanics which ships have and how to use them effectively. A lot of is simply invisible ingame.

The infocards are practically useless to any newbie or even a regular. Just look at missiles. Half the stats on there are words that dont explain what it means in combat.

I'd the infocards text could exactly explain the intended purpose of a weapon and how to use it that would be great.

I mean there is a reason we have open Single Player to test/do exactly what you described before buying them. I'm yet to meet a single person who's read any weapon infocard and went based on it, the only thing people look for is numbers and those are really self explanatory. When you look at a Justice mk3 you don't read the long ass infocard, you see 8.33 refire rate, 900 m/s velocity gun, with 687 damage per second at 1,19 efficiency. What more do you need to know?

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[Chxlls]

I don't think either. I'm comparing with the guys I used to beat about 40% of the time. I now win an exact 0%. I don't even get hull damage off in most fights. And on the other side of the coin, the few people I did beat regularly went from 60, maybe 70% to a solid 100%. Its like the skill gradient went from a gradient to just a set of bricks. Anything beyond some specific line is just a guaranteed, no contest loss, and anything beyond another line is a guaranteed, no contest win.

I can understand this. There are very few “middle ground players” these days. Many of them have stopped playing entirely or have become much stronger players. I think that this is more to do with the pvp snub community than balance, though.

I know where my skill level is at, it's somewhere below average. Your average player beats me with barely any effort, and I beat low skill players with barely any effort. If I were to talk about gaining skill at all, I'd say that being in one of these 6 minute long death timers teaches me exactly nothing. I've watched plenty of PvPer videos for theory, but in practice its just watching myself die for a few minutes while unable to do anything about it. Instakills, I had a slow process over thousands of deaths that taught me exactly what it looked like right before I got instakilled. I knew when I had made a mistake and was going to die instantly for it. Now my mistake is starting the PvP in the first place. It's like those chess memes where you play the very first move of the game and it's mate in 20.

If you’re learning more from an instakill than from a 6 minute duel, then I’m not sure what to tell you other than that you should be recording your fights and seeing what mistakes you make. I have done this with multiple players and can pinpoint exact timings where opportunities were missed or mistakes were made. Happy to help if needed.

I also don’t see you in conn very much, if ever. Maybe it’s a timezone issue, but it could be a matter of lack of practice.

Despite me knowing my fight style and explaining exactly what it is and exactly how to beat it to the people I try to teach, the results do not change at all. People learn what the technique is, but the actual skill gap is impassible. In 4.9 I could land hull damage on Rax, maybe 1/8th HP. Today, absolute zero. I'm not even sure what changed other than 5.0, I don't know the actual diagnosis for this. I just know the symptoms very well. It demonstrably goes both ways. If the problem disappears once you reach the highest levels of skill, that's great for you, but down here its not very fun where every fight is going to be boring (you slamming enemy with no contest) or boring (you being slammed with no contest).

Rax is in the top 1% of players. You’re not going to see material results unless you practice your ass off. Knowing how to beat someone and actually doing it are two completely different things. The mechanical skill required to beat the top players is much, much higher than it was even a year ago, because the top players continue to practice and improve.

Again, not trying to be rude but I think this speaks more to snub skill issue, and less to a balance issue.

[Toaster]

(Existing) weapon infocards have always been mostly ignored by dev teams and are therefore woefully out of date. Made most evident by the SNAC still being the SNAC despite being a completely different weapon since 5.0.

And while it's true that most people ignore the infocards anyway and just look at the stats, newer players may not yet be sure what exactly the stats mean in practice and a little worldbuilding fluff has never hurt anyone anyway.

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Olivia Sable

[SeaFalcon]

...

I mean there is a reason we have open Single Player to test/do exactly what you described before buying them. I'm yet to meet a single person who's read any weapon infocard and went based on it, the only thing people look for is numbers and those are really self explanatory. When you look at a Justice mk3 you don't read the long ass infocard, you see 8.33 refire rate, 900 m/s velocity gun, with 687 damage per second at 1,19 efficiency. What more do you need to know?

you took the easiest example.

Where are certain mechanics explained ingame such as armour penetration, sub targeting, fuze, min-arming of missiles and these are just a few examples of hidden mechanics.
Where are the functions of thrust drain explained, where are is it explained what energy damage even means? How is a new player supposed to know that not charging his shield saves them energy?

The help menu on the nav map is very much outdated.

If you want people to become decent at pvp at least explain the mechanics somewhere in the game so they can read it and understand what is going on.

Even simple new commands that were added such as docking module commands are not explained in the game or the newly added group number chat.

A lot of the frustrations that come from the community right now is because there are so many mechanics that constantly get changed and tweaked that people get confused and there is no source of the truth out there.

Saying "just go into single player" gives you a handful of answers but nothing much.

The game used to be fun because it was a basic arcade, easy to understand and you could perfect it.
New players needed help knowing what engine kill did for them, but that was about it, they got the basics from there.
Now you have to spend an hour explaining all the new mechanics that have been added, some really great, others not so great.
Without documentation and a single source of truth, people will remain grumpy because they will not understand why they lost a fight due to mechanics that feel extremely hidden.

[Weapon]

What we're looking for here is tooltips.

[The_Godslayer]

There are very few “middle ground players” these days. Many of them have stopped playing entirely or have become much stronger players. I think that this is more to do with the pvp snub community than balance, though.

If the answer to my problem of competition is just "stop playing snubs", that's crazy lmao. Nothing I can exactly do about that, especially given that I don't really have capital ship money to get one for each faction I play.

I also don’t see you in conn very much, if ever. Maybe it’s a timezone issue, but it could be a matter of lack of practice.

It's very much a timezone issue. Back in 2021 and 2022 I could spend a lot of time in conn at peak hours because I was between jobs, but these days I work 9am to 6pm in a -7 timezone, which puts me getting home at basically lowest hours. My main competitor there is Karidon, who's another insurmountable, no-contest loss for me.

Rax is in the top 1% of players. You’re not going to see material results unless you practice your ass off. Knowing how to beat someone and actually doing it are two completely different things. The mechanical skill required to beat the top players is much, much higher than it was even a year ago, because the top players continue to practice and improve.

Right, and even in this case it seems to just be "stop playing snubs anymore", which is an answer I could take if I could figure out the keyboard spam that is playing capships, and had the downright generational wealth needed to have capships in every faction. Rax shooting far ahead over the course of a year is not surprising, what's surprising me is my negative skill gain and the significantly widened overall gaps.

Perhaps you can provide some videos of this of both sides of the fence, the people you currently smash and those you do not?

I'll start recording the fights I have outside of events and stuff again, yeah.

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Also, just to try to return to one of the original topics: the guns that felt good inrp or were simply fun are also gone. I've already brought up the Hurricane FWG for the inrp feeling, but the Corona beam was just fun to shoot. "Find target, kamehameha (Special beam cannon?)" was a very simple, low investment gameplay loop, yes, but it was also simply entertaining on its own, even post-nerf. Manticores and Zappers had significantly less appeal than the Corona, the pulsing beams were actually probably the weakest guns visually, but I have vague recollections of other sustained beam weapons, I think with Gallia, and those were cool too. A return of sustained beams of some kind would be neat just to have for visuals and maybe good audio if we can get it.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"