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Rigsta

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10 Good
  1. First impressions of the Ruffian discipline in PVP: Omni-directional back blast replacement is nice. With both DoTs ticking and Sanguine Shot active, Brutal Shots hits hard. Damage output from 10m is good (with DoTs + SS active), staying outside 4m helps survivability a great deal. My fights against concealment operatives were laughable. What I could do with 3 GCDs of prep time from 10m, they could do the moment we entered melee range. I found a lot of my opponents were purging the DoTs immedaitely after I applied the second one. For me, Ruffian is all about kiting & dealing damage from 10m, while keeping yourself up with the insta-heal + HoT. The problem is that although Brutal Shots hits hard, it's almost a waste of a GCD if you haven't applied both DoTs and Sanguine Shot. For those three GCDs your damage output is next to nothing. Ruffian appeals to me as a discipline with a more varied toolbox than simply punching & backstabbing, but 3-5s of warmup time simply wasn't practical. I feel like it would be a lot better if Brutal Shots reached full damage with only one DoT + Sanguine Shot applied, and/or if Sanguine Shot applied one of the DoTs. By contrast, with Scrapper spec you're at increased risk due to the melee range requirement but it's much more straightforward. You just shotgun them and boom, your damage buffs are active. I had a lot more success with Scrapper.
  2. Another close deathmatch solo queue. Full, uncut round this time so skip to the end if you just want the scoreboard. For some reason I kept catching 3 when I went to press 2 so you'll see me use retros in a couple of odd spots. Available in 1440p. Feel free to share even if it says unlisted, the only reason I'm not publishing it yet is that my subbers are expecting some Planetside 2 content and I don't want to spam them with GSF matches.
  3. Watching the stream atm. Good stuff, lots of really close matches. Definitely recommend watching the highlights/VoDs if you missed it.
  4. I have only played GSF long enough to master one ship and get a few others to an acceptable level, but a few things stand out to me in terms of balance/fun factor. 1: Ion railgun. The massive energy drain combined with the 55% snare on a hit-scan weapon with a 15km range just feels like too much. It makes the weapon unsatisfying to me; I only need to land one shot without warning from 15km away and they're finished unless they're already hugging terrain. I wouldn't change the damage. But I think the energy drain could be separated into a small initial drain and a drain-over-time effect. Eg. 15 energy drained on hit, then another 25 over 7 seconds (arbitrary numbers). Or make the pilot choose between the large energy drain and the snare effect? 2: Slug crits. When I get these, it always feels like a cheap kill. Like yay RNG favoured me on that occasion. Woo. Such counterplay. Does the biggest single hit in the game eally need to be even bigger when the dice rolls the right way? 3: Distortion Field. I don't understand why the best anti-railgun, anti-laser and anti-rocket shield bar none also needs to be the best anti-missile shield bar none. I think it would make more sense if one had to give something up for an extra missile break. A possible alternative mechanic would be a shield that nullifies the next >600 damage hit within 10 seconds (ignores weaker hits). Not sure how that would play out. It's just something that occurred to me. 4: Evasion. My only real beef with evasion other than infuriating instances of perfect shots missing multiple times in a row (looking at you, Flashfire face-tanking my burst lasers from 3km ) is that it still works while moving slowly or even remaining stationary. So a gunship can pop distortion field and "evade" hits while CHARGIN MUH LASAH. It's unintuitive, especially as the game does not inform you when you "missed" due to RNG as opposed to actual bad aim. I'd like "evaded" hits to be reported on-screen. And I'd like evasion to be dependent on movement speed and direction of movement, eg. moving slowly or stopping would reduce (not eliminate) evasion, flying straight at someone would reduce (not eliminate) evasion. In short I think evasion builds need a weakness other than cluster missile spam. Speaking of which, why do they have a 3-second cooldown and similar damage to concussion missiles at max rank? That's nuts. Disclaimer: I am not a game designer, I am not a GSF expert but I consider myself reasonably well-informed. These are just the things that stand out to me as things which reduce my enjoyment of GSF.
  5. Thanks for the favourable critique. I don't save wingman as such, I just try not to waste it on non-critical targets or targets that are unlikely to have high evasion. And uh, I sometimes might not notice it's available. And yes that's me that watches your stream. I probably won't be able to for a while though as I'm (finally) back to normal sleep patterns. Late shifts kinda suck. I'll probably watch the VoDs/highlights though.
  6. It's all subjective, but I enjoy it. Stealth is incredibly useful for skipping fights in dailies and flashpoints by putting a mob to sleep so your group can run past it, and even just getting from A to B as you can use rocket boost without breaking stealth. I prefer dirty fighting (lethality) for its 10m range and more involved rotation, but scrapper (concealment) is perfectly viable (imo) and more straightforward, great for switching targets at a moment's notice. I'm not too crazy about the way the healing plays but it has a good tool kit.
  7. Can't say I was expecting this score on the losing team in deathmatch. The railgun had no upgrades. Bonus kill at the end that I really had to work for
  8. Sniper. I am loving the Quarrel. Looking forward to unlocking the Condor. Disclaimer: I'm gradually working on a kind of infinite-energy build for the Novadive, I do occasionally use other ships
  9. I can do well in a stock ship as well. That damage number you achieved looks very similar to region I hit when the enemy team doesn't harass my gunship. If that was with a stock strike fighter or scout, props. If it was a gunship that kinda defeats the point as new pilots don't have gunships. (edit, misread the other team's score as it was obscured) But I can do much better in an upgraded one. There some very obvious examples: Times I eat a missile with less than 5 seconds left on barrel roll Much better travel times with upgraded barrel roll and engine power/speed. Wishing I HAD barrel roll (koiogran turn? pah) Run out of weapon power after 3 railgun shots (or is it 4?) Running out of engine power much faster than the other guy This is frustrating for me as an experienced pilot, but it must be outright painful as a new pilot.
  10. Or it could be something to do with the fact that upgraded ships have significant advantages in DPS, range, missile lock time, railgun charge time, crit chance, weapon/shield/engine ability power usage, total weapon/shield/engine power pool, weapon/shield/engine recharge speed, speed, agility, health/evasion, sensor range/damping. And access to outright better abilities, with shorter cooldowns - barrel roll, distortion field, fortress shield, blaster overcharge, shield piercing copilot ability, armour-ignoring slug railgun, AE-damage ion railgun, and so on. Did I miss anything? I recently rolled a new character, and the fact I run out of blaster/engine power much more quickly is evident. Skill is always a factor, but non-upgraded fighters suck.
  11. Disclaimer: I love flying gunships. I also love flying scouts, Nova Dive to be exact. You've already stated that you know gunships aren't going to be removed. Instead of repeatedly (and passionately) stating they should be removed when you know it's not going to happen, why not try something more constructive? The one-shot crit needs to go. 100% agree, there's nothing skillful about getting a lucky D5 roll. I'm pretty sure (not certain) that if you are hit by an enemy - including gunships at max range - they become visible to you no matter what sensor range & dampening is involved. I may be wrong about the specifics but I don't remember ever being unable to back-target an enemy gunship firing on me. Side note, I consider that to be the chief (well, only) downside to the hits-4-targets ion railgun upgrade. "Hi everyone, come and get me!" That is true to an extent, but it's also true that any one-versus-many situation is going to be a challenging task. Especially if those enemies are communicating. Gunships have average sensors at best. They can equip range sensors but there isn't much point, the majority will be using dampening sensors. Approaching enemy gunships. Open space, traveling in a straight line, approaching from within their field of view, and their allies spotting you all contribute to the "I can't get close" scenario. Taking a fast ship (eg. default scout) on a route around cover to attack them from 90 or 180 degrees is advisable. That won't work on everyone every time and it's important to check your target window to see if they're turning to face you, but I find the people who take that kind of approach are much harder to deal with than the ones who just bum rush me. Heck I've had some facepalm-worthy success simply parking on a satellite and pointing my nose at the enemy spawn point, wondering when someone is going to try approaching from a non-obvious angle at speed. Teamwork is OP Sorry if this is stating the obvious, but: If they brought friends then you should too. ...Or it could be the ideal anti-gunship tool. I think they need some tuning, but I also think they add an extra element to the game rather than spoil it. Currently we essentially have: Scouts: Fast, very agile, fragile knife-fighters with strong sensors. Strike fighters: Fast-ish, agile, tough, versatile, mid-range weapons available (and 10km range torpedoes) Gunships: Slow (mostly), not-agile, tough, strong long range weapons, strong short-range weapons too but it's harder to bring them to bear. Having more than the nearest 5km to worry about makes it more interesting - imo. A few other things that don't seem to have been brought up: Counter-snipe from max range. Suddenly losing my forward shields means I'm done sniping that satellite for as long as it takes me to put cover between me and whoever hit me with their ion railgun. Energy drain. Strike fighters can have trouble getting close enough but when they bring ion cannons and/or ion missiles I cannot escape. Proton Torpedoes. This might be just me as I do not run hydro spanner or barrel roll, but I hate these things. 10km range, 100% shield bypass, oh and they can crit. Sabotage probe. All my hate.
  12. I've flown and upgraded the Star Guard (default strike fighter) to the point where I decided I'd rather have 2 types of missile than two types of blaster and it's building up ship req from the intro/daily/weekly missions. I already had 2.6K fleet req and didn't want to spend the time needed to build up 5K for the Pike so I converted 2.4K of Star Guard ship req to fleet req to unlock the Pike. It cost ~80 coins. If I hadn't done that, the quickest way to earn that remaining 2.4K would have been to use each ships' daily bonus, which feels a bit too much like grinding to me. This way I can just continue to fly the ships I like and put the fleet req I earn from now on towards upgrading them (fleet req can be spent on anything, including upgrades for any ship).
  13. I don't get where all this "straight line" stuff is coming from. That certainly makes things easier but a good portion of my railgun hits are against people dogfighting or hugging satellites. I miss plenty but it's not like movement makes you immune to railgun hits. From easiest to hardest: Stationary Straight line Satellite hugging Dogfighting someone else Dogfighting me Boosting across my field of view (straight line) Boosting and actively juking to avoid fire E: Got critted by a fully-charged slug. The Bypass copilot ability helps too, though I prefer Wingman (accuracy buff) for my gunship.
  14. I have no trouble with them, nor apparently do the people streaming & youtubing. I'd like the ability to temporarily disable nose-follows-pointer for better strafing but that's a wish rather than a necessity. Weapons fire at pointer. Nose follows pointer. This form of mouse control is very intuitive, but does initially feel odd if you have never used it before. If your mouse pointer is not moving smoothly then you have a technical issue, mine's fine. Speed control: W = 100% throttle, no key pressed = 66%, S = 33%, X = 0%. Spacebar = boost aka afterburner. I have not encountered any situation in 195 matches where I desired more granular control than that. Freeform flight is a fundamental difference that makes GSF completely different to the PVE space combat all by itself. Having full control of your ship in 3D space is very disorienting and it takes a fair few matches to be able to move around without getting lost and crashing. This is not due to poor design, it's because 3D space is a very different environment and play experience to the ground game and on-rails PVE space combat. It takes practice, and some people seem to be mistaking that for bad design and poor controls. Power control is also very important and I change it very frequently depending on the situation. GSF is far more than just the previous space combat without the rails. Incorrect. When stationary (press X/use railgun zoom) you turn significantly slower than when moving. Holding S to throttle down but remain moving appears to yield the tightest turns.
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