Why Pre-made raid groups and fully equip ships, actually harm GSF and PvP matches.

[RickDagles]

There's a lot of stuff flying in/through here, but I just want to say that I will actually go to bat defending Tommm with his practice of leaving the node half-capped rather than staying on it to make sure it's capped (Not that he needs it).

 

For one, it very much follows his flight style/philosophy insofar as I've seen.

 

Tommm, Scrabs, and similar pilots are at their absolute best when they are diving at the enemy, and I've seen in several cases this means pushing almost their entire team back to the cap ship in a dom. By doing that, he/they tend to create so much breathing space it's not funny, so when I'm with a pilot like that, if I know they are like that, I'll make it my business to go clean up the caps or provide support where they are, because it ends up being me playing to their strengths, which helps our team.

 

The way I see it, usually, with a pilot like that on your team, you're doing your team a disservice to not let them/want them to go free-ranging to some degree.

 

I personally think, and while I've not flown with or against him much, Tommm's the sort that's always going to be where the fighting is heaviest, and is such a heavy hitter, it's just not right to try to reign him in. In terms of team game, it's adjusting my style to his strengths, rather than trying to get him to conform to my idea of what the team should be.

 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... I used to love flying with Scrabs because he made my life so much easier in doing what I needed to do. Have someone on your team demanding that much attention, and it's silly to not effectively use that to your advantage. There were times I used to follow Scrabs in a dive at an enemy sat, and could rack up 3-4 kills in 10-15s as everyone on the opposing team in the area turned to follow/fight Scrabs. It was shooting fish in a barrel for me coming in 3km behind him.

 

For all the talk about a team game and how to team/not to team, etc going on here, I think it would be wrong for me to not pipe up here. If you've got an all-star on your team, it's worth the effort to play to their strengths, and as a team, try to shore up their weaknesses. If someone on my team is insanely good at taking the fight to the enemy, I feel like I do our team a disservice if I don't adapt my flight style to be in line with his. From what I've seen, if Tommm leaves a contested node, it's because others on his side are coming in, and the fight over the node is already done, so he's going on to look for the next fight. In that scenario, I'm perfectly happy to go sit on the node and finish capping before I go following him to the next melee. If for no other reason than that I know those pilots who can do that are better at that role than I am with my preferred build (Or in Tommm's and a few other cases, they're just better at that role than I am. Period.).

 

That whole team thing cuts both ways, and personally, I do feel like I would be in the wrong to try to get a pilot like Tommm to conform to what *I* think we need, rather than use him and his tendencies to the greatest advantage of our team. I'm perfectly happy being Cedric Ceballos to his Shaq if it means our team wins. While I'm still competitive, I'm old enough to not care too much if I'm alpha dog or not, and some of these kids out there who grew up with video games are just more twitchy than I could ever be at this point in my career.

 

As for who's effective and who's not judging by the scoreboard, we've all got our own metrics, and no one stat at the end gives the entire story for me.

 

 

Ok so this will probably be my last post on this topic because my words keep getting misinterpreted and it's pretty frustrating. But I want to make one thing very clear. I never said that tomm's strategies don't work or that he is wrong for anything that he's doing. I was simply stating that there are several other viable strategies and tactics in the game that can result in a win. You don't need 200 DPS and 50% accuracy in a scout to be an ace, because there multiple other ways you can be helping your team rather than constantly killing off-node. It's a different strategy, but they can both work.

 

 

 

 

 

As for the green/blue holding being ludicrous. I think how you're taking such a simple comment about a complex situation to be ludicrous. I think it's ludicrous to allow yourself to be killed on the node in favor of capping the node just to lose it a second later when you do die because your transversal isn't high enough for you to dodge everything that's coming at you.

 

I never said that your choice to leave the nodes was ludicrous. I said it was ludicrous for you not to acknowledge that briefly holding a node is a viable strategy for an ace scout pilot.

 

 

You're talking about it being a team game left right and center but then you're saying it's necessary to play every single ship to switch for the meta? You're the ludicrous one, you're essentially saying that in order to win a team game, you have to be the best solo player in the world and do everything in the game by yourself. Get off it Siraka. The guys with the 96%+ winrates are not getting it by being alone and switching. They're getting it by being in a group and switching for synergies, and at that point its not their own winrate anymore, it's their teams winrate. I'll stick to my guns by saying he shouldn't be known for his scout play, but by no means am I saying anything about being superior to him. I'm saying that his bomber play is just that much vastly ahead of his scout play.

 

First of all, there's really no need to start a flame war by name calling. I don't understand why a civil debate has to turn angry for you? Get off of it? When have I ever shown any arrogance in this debate? You were the one throwing around stuff about how most scouts suck because they can't get 200 DPS and 50% accuracy, they make simple mistakes, and there are only enough aces to count on your hands etc etc.

 

2nd, I didn't say it was necessary for you to know all of the meta ships to be a good player. I said that there are times when switching to a certain ship will give your team the advantage. If the other team is a premade of 8 well coordinated players with 3-4 ion gunships, 1-2 railgun bombers, and 3 evasion (running interference) BLC cluster scouts, do you think a quad/pod scout with retro thrusters is the optimal build to fight against that? Like I said, you are an exceptional player so you might be able to do OK against that, but for a lot of players there is a better ship that they can bring out. I'd really like to see how your build does in a Super Serious night against a coordinated premade. This is not an attack or a challenge, I am legit curious to see how well you could do. Personally, I find the build is terrible in Lost Shipyards deathmatch against a good team because ion railgun, railgun drones, and BLC/cluster really limits it. The build is still fairly decent in domination and Kuat Mesas deathmatch where there is easier LoS available. I feel I can help my team win a lot easier using a BLC/cluster or pod/powerdive/running interference build in that scenario. I know you're also skilled at a similar build, but can we agree that this isn't exactly a 200 DPS build?

 

 

In short, you think I'm having a narrow view on the game, I think your eyes just aren't wide enough to see the other areas I'm focussing on.

 

Again I never said your way was wrong. Not once. My entire thesis was that there are ways you can be an Ace without getting 200 DPS and 50%+ accuracy.

Edited May 19, 2015 by RickDagles

[nyghtrunner]

Ok so this will probably be my last post on this topic because my words keep getting misinterpreted and it's pretty frustrating. But I want to make one thing very clear. I never said that tomm's strategies don't work or that he is wrong for anything that he's doing. I was simply stating that there are several other viable strategies and tactics in the game that can result in a win. You don't need 200 DPS and 50% accuracy in a scout to be an ace, because there multiple other ways you can be helping your team rather than constantly killing off-node. It's a different strategy, but they can both work.

My post wasn't really directed at you, but kind of in general*. I've seen others yell at Tommm in his stream about how he's not helping by doing what he's doing, I've had people yell at me for playing a similar style on occasion... So if my post came off as being directed at you, that wasn't my intent, and apologies and such.

 

In general, what you are saying here is kind of what I was saying, in that there are other, perfectly viable tactics, and I look at the onus being on that particular player (in my scenario, me) to adapt and conform to what the rest of the team is doing. So if I'm in a match, and a player like Tommm is on my team, and I know the player and how they fly, I try to take it on myself to free that player up to do what he needs to do.

 

Case in point, there's a GS on our server who is a really deadly shot, and a very evasive flyer. But as near as I can tell, he values his KDR above all else, and so if he's pressured, it's somewhat easy to kind of remove him from the game. In a way, it's about as anti-Tommm as you can get in terms of flight style.

 

So if I see him on my team, I adjust my style to try to keep an eye on him, and provide peels, because then he becomes super effective. So if we lose, and he has a bad game because he's spending the entire time running around evading enemies, I point the finger at myself for not doing enough to help him. I don't point the finger at him for valuing his KDR as highly as he does** (Personally I think it's sometimes better to fight it out, even if you die, because you can respawn and get back in the fight, rather than spend minutes running). But he's a solid pilot, a good teammate (who covers you if he's not harried), and can swing a match if he gets comfortable enough to start free ranging and truly sniping. So in those matches, my job is to help him feel comfortable and hopefully draw enough heat to keep the fights away from him.

 

Someone wasting time raging at Tommm for doing his thing isn't really helpful to the team. It's far better to just let a pilot like that go do what they do, and adjust your style to help out. That's really all I meant by the team thing swinging both ways.

 

This is all kind of way off topic anyway. You and I can sit here and talk about this all day long, but it's the sort of minutiae detailing at higher levels that goes a bit above and beyond the point of the thread.

 

*And to the extent it was, I was saying I'll go to bat for Tommm w/regards to his flight style and leaving nodes before they're green, not that I agree with his definition of an ace. As I said, we've all got our own metrics for that description.

**This is my assumption. I'm not sure if that's the reason he flies the way he flies, it just kind of fits my observations.

 

If I'm Shaq can Drako be Kobe? And if Drako is Kobe can Verain be Vanessa Bryant?

You and Drako are way too friendly for this to work. Drako could maybe be Rick Fox, though. Then Verain can still be Vanessa, just a different one.

[tommmsunb]

I'll put it this way Siraka, the guys who I've seen who are incapable of pulling off those stats every so often are generally not worth mentioning in the scout ace argument. If you think ace is the top 50 of scout pilots then I think you're deluding yourself. If you go back to the old aces threads, it was a lot of "this guy killed me and he won one game for us therefore he must be an ace." as a result I try to keep it strict so we don't have the hundreds of people being mentioned as "aces" when really it's nothing like that at all.

 

As for how my build does in super serious. I attended the first 2 super seriouses and I did just fine in only quads/pods, didn't fly burst/cluster at the time. Ever since the second one I've been busy every single time. I'll be missing the next one naturally as being 10400km away from my gaming computer. Honestly I'd attend super serious more if it were soloQ based, I remember on the second one complaining heavily that no matter what we do our second half of our team was a group of noobs and the other team would be all great pilots because the matchmaking formula for groups seems to default to 0 somewhere.

 

 

And no we can't agree that's not a 200 DPS build, in this match (you can't see it but I remember my DPS number.) I had 250+ DPS http://i.imgur.com/J58G08o.jpg edit: nvm I was thinking of a different match, the one with 250+ dps over 12 minutes was with quads/pods the one I posted was the 232 after all. This was with burst/cluster, as for power dive I've never used it, I don't see it as reliable/predictable enough and it doesn't give you any offensive potential so it doesn't fit into me. As for running interference I don't run it because I see it as a crutch.

This match was 218 DPS or so and burst/cluster http://i.imgur.com/AiiwFpB.jpg/

Hell I've got 208 DPS with rapids/cluster BO/concentrated before in domination when I was joking around.

 

There was another match that I strangely didn't break any records in with burst/cluster that had 265 DPS and I didn't post it. It was a Kuat Mesas deathmatch.

 

 

As for if quads/pods is good against that set of ships. Yes it is. I really have no idea how you have problems with gunships with that build. As for running interference scouts. It's quite easy to slip into a mistake that will kill you with those guys, for a long while I had issues with them in quads/pods but I have a formula for dealing with them now that I'm not about to share publicly.

 

If you're having issues with bombers in that build then you're seriously seriously not doing it right.

 

In short, I do think it's the optimal ship for fighitng that build. Especially in TDM.

 

 

This match had that build. http://i.imgur.com/naquwbH.jpg and one of the scouts was Scrab, he was running burst/pods if i remember correctly. You can see people with near 0% accuracy. Those were the bombers. We killed them enough I think.

Edited May 19, 2015 by tommmsunb

[RickDagles]

If you think ace is the top 50 of scout pilots then I think you're deluding yourself.

 

Huh? When did I say anything about top 50 scout pilots?

 

 

And no we can't agree that's not a 200 DPS build

 

Ok, but none of the builds you mentioned use running interference like I suggested. If running interference is a crutch than what about DF? Willie uses running interference, are you saying he needs a crutch?

 

As for if quads/pods is good against that set of ships. Yes it is. I really have no idea how you have problems with gunships with that build.

 

LOL again you are putting words in my mouth. When did I ever say I had problems with gunships in that build?

 

 

If you're having issues with bombers in that build then you're seriously seriously not doing it right.

 

WHAT? When did I say that?

 

 

Yes I was in that game (Rogue-eleven) and I believe I was running a nearly stock Clarion when I had just come over to Ebon Hawk from Shadowlands. Most of those players were terrible. Wait what are we even talking about here anyway? Yes you are the best scout pilot, I've already acknowledged that several times.

Edited May 19, 2015 by RickDagles

[tommmsunb]

Huh? When did I say anything about top 50 scout pilots?

 

 

 

 

Ok, but none of the builds you mentioned use running interference like I suggested. If running interference is a crutch than what about DF? Willie uses running interference, are you saying he needs a crutch?

 

 

 

LOL again you are putting words in my mouth. When did I ever say I had problems with gunships in that build?

 

 

 

 

WHAT? When did I say that?

 

 

 

 

Yes I was in that game (Rogue-eleven) and I believe I was running a nearly stock Clarion when I had just come over to Ebon Hawk from Shadowlands. Most of those players were terrible. Wait what are we even talking about here anyway? Yes you are the best scout pilot, I've already acknowledged that several times.

 

For all of your questions. Read your previous posts. You mentioned top 50 yesterday. You're heavily implying a build that is 50% gunships, 25% scout and 25% bomber is the quads/pods murderer. As for running interference being a crutch. I stand by that, there's been a lot of times I've been 1-1ing running interference scouts and they fly like absolute morons just because they have dfield + running interference up and then afterwards all they can say is "Man RNG sure wasn't on my side." As for willie needing that crutch, I don't think he needs it and I think it's silly that he does use it.

Edited May 19, 2015 by tommmsunb

[RickDagles]

For all of your questions. Read your previous posts. You mentioned top 50 yesterday. You're heavily implying a build that is 50% gunships, 25% scout and 25% bomber is the quads/pods murderer. As for running interference being a crutch. I stand by that, there's been a lot of times I've been 1-1ing running interference scouts and they fly like absolute morons just because they have dfield + running interference up and then afterwards all they can say is "Man RNG sure wasn't on my side." As for willie needing that crutch, I don't think he needs it and I think it's silly that he does use it.

 

The correct math would actually be 37.5% evasion scouts, 37.5-50% gunships, and 12.5-25% railgun bombers. And it's never one single ship that I have a problem with, it's when they work as a team. I also didn't say it was the "murderer", I said it wasn't optimal in Super Serious night on Lost Shipyards.

 

When I mentioned top 50 I said hypothetical two times. Did you miss that?

 

You continue to twist my words over and over again and this conversation is going nowhere so I'm done.

Edited May 19, 2015 by RickDagles

[tommmsunb]

The correct math would actually be 37.5% evasion scouts, 37.5-50% gunships, and 12.5-25% railgun bombers. And it's never one single ship that I have a problem with, it's when they work as a team. I also didn't say it was the "murderer", I said it wasn't optimal in Super Serious night on Lost Shipyards.

 

When I mentioned top 50 I said hypothetical two times. Did you miss that?

 

You continue to twist my words over and over again and this conversation is going nowhere so I'm done.

 

Now you know just how annoying it was when you were twisting my words earlier in this thread. Glad we were able to reach this conclusion.

[BrianDavion]

I'm always happy when they up the rewards for GSF, and at the very least sellable decorative pieces would be nice. But there's a downside to this: if you add really important stuff to GSF grind things, you are "forcing" players who don't want to, to play. It's a fine line, because an MMO always "compensates" you for your time, and if one mode of play is fundamentally unrewarding, well, that's bad- people who want to play are incentivized not to. But go the other way and it's really bad too.

 

which is kinda my point, honestly I've hit a point where I'm GSFing less and less because there's not really much point to it. I've got all the decos I'll ever need, and the only ships I have left to upgrade are things like the comet breaker, that I never use.

 

I'm a RPer so for me it'd not take much, BW's given a buncha new decos for ground PVP, why can't they go and give space some stuff? especially as there's so much obvious potential. but this is almost a new thread in and of itself.

[Verain]

As for willie needing that crutch, I don't think he needs it and I think it's silly that he does use it.

 

Willie doesn't really have that to 1v1 people though. He uses RI when he needs (or thinks he needs) to stay on a target and will be tanking railguns. I'm sure he uses it versus scouts when he can, but I really feel the utility there is when he's diving a node with a plating bomber on it, and the node is being guarded by a gunship. Maybe this is the angle of it that I see when I fly against him because I'm in the position to see it, but it really seems like he's essentially giving himself a longer time on target in these cases.

[Armonddd]

I'm no Nem or Drako, with the ability to carry a team, and

 

goddammit it's like no one on teh knows I exist

 

Since TOR is my only MMO (seriously, what kind of job do you have that you can afford more than one sub? I want it),

 

Erm, US federal minimum wage is like $7.25, and many states are pushing for $10+ (San Francisco is aiming for $15 by 2017 or something). Even at that rate, a month's sub is maybe two and a half hours of work after tax. If you're working 30 hours per week, you've got enough for multiple subs. If you're not from the US and/or have a job that doesn't pay ****** minimum wages, it gets even better.

[Verain]

I mean, by hour, an MMO subscription is wildly efficient entertainment / dollar. Scarily so in some cases.

[Maulkat]

You all mention the "ace" scout pilots, what about the good bombers, strikers or GSs? They seem to be left out of this conversation. It has also wandered away from the topic of the post.

I make a poor scout pilot, but I back my team up by bringing ammo to a fight in my bomber or when said scouts are able to keep others off me when I'm in a GS, I have free reign to shoot at people.

This is sort of beside the point though.

I solo queue and fly grouped. Prefer groups to solo as I then know who I will be flying with, what strengths and weaknesses they have and what ship is best suited for me to fly.

[Verain]

You all mention the "ace" scout pilots, what about the good bombers, strikers or GSs?

 

Mostly their discussion is scout talk. Tom apparently doesn't see many good bomber pilots, which isn't an entirely fair assessment, gunships haven't come up, and not only are strike pilots not really being discussed, but it's very hard to discern what a good strike pilot really is, as the ships are generally undertuned enough that it both pushes many pilots away and is hard to determine what is actually good and what is great piloting of a strike.

[tommmsunb]

I mean, by hour, an MMO subscription is wildly efficient entertainment / dollar. Scarily so in some cases.

 

Yeah for real. When you just think of going out for a movie you usually spend something like 25$ for an hour and a half to 2 hours of entertainment. Here you're spending 15$/month for a maximum of 720 hours of entertainment per 15$. Of course you'd never take full advantage of those 720 hours in one month, but you can.

[Ryuku-sama]

Yeah for real. When you just think of going out for a movie you usually spend something like 25$ for an hour and a half to 2 hours of entertainment. Here you're spending 15$/month for a maximum of 720 hours of entertainment per 15$. Of course you'd never take full advantage of those 720 hours in one month, but you can.

 

Well.. I have to disagree.... It can go as high as 744 hours or as low as 672 hours

[TRFWesVos]

goddammit it's like no one on teh knows I exist

 

It's because I haven't flown with or against you recently.

 

Erm, US federal minimum wage is like $7.25, and many states are pushing for $10+ (San Francisco is aiming for $15 by 2017 or something). Even at that rate, a month's sub is maybe two and a half hours of work after tax. If you're working 30 hours per week, you've got enough for multiple subs. If you're not from the US and/or have a job that doesn't pay ****** minimum wages, it gets even better.

 

Yeah...but once you factor in a house payment, student loans, groceries, internet bills, self-employment taxes (since I'm self-employed), business expenses, and supporting a family, that $15 a month is precious.

[StrixHiraeth]

Yeah...but once you factor in a house payment, student loans, groceries, internet bills, self-employment taxes (since I'm self-employed), business expenses, and supporting a family, that $15 a month is precious.

 

Indeed. Every cent is precious. SWTOR is the only MMO I currently subscribe to, but for me it's more an issue of time than of money; MMOs are things that don't provide much reward unless you can spend fairly significant time on them, imho. As it is, I spend maybe 4-8 hours per week playing games. With that amount of time, I still find that GSF is extremely rewarding

Edited May 20, 2015 by Ymris

[Armonddd]

Yeah...but once you factor in a house payment, student loans, groceries, internet bills, self-employment taxes (since I'm self-employed), business expenses, and supporting a family, that $15 a month is precious.

 

I can't speak for student loans or self-employment taxes, but I lived on part-time minimum wage in one of the most expensive cities in the country for like three years and had enough money for subs and alcohol.

[tommmsunb]

I can't speak for student loans or self-employment taxes, but I lived on part-time minimum wage in one of the most expensive cities in the country for like three years and had enough money for subs and alcohol.

 

always money in the banana stand

[Lendul]

I can't speak for student loans or self-employment taxes, but I lived on part-time minimum wage in one of the most expensive cities in the country for like three years and had enough money for subs and alcohol.

and you was self suffcient?

[StrixHiraeth]

About minimum wage... although the United States has one of the highest minimum wages in the world, it is still far from what can be called a living wage. The fact that so many can still justify spending money on entertainment despite living in poverty is more a symptom of our times than evidence of our bounty.

[AlrikFassbauer]

ultimatly as with any multiplayer game, the question needs to be asked "are we all having fun? and if not how can I reasonably address this?"

 

Best question in this whole discussion.

 

In my opinion - and you do know that I'm biased - the "fun" is exclusively on the aces' side.

 

As players, no, we don't need to do this. It's nice when some do, but your priority in a pvp game is that YOUR team is having a good time- not the other guys.

 

When I'm in your team - hypothetically - then I am NOT having "fun" when aces degrade me so much to an non-contributor that I just can't have the feeling of "fun" anymore.

 

To me, a game is *not* fun when I'm reduced to the role of an innocent bystander whereas the press - thinking sports now - cheers to the players which did all of the goals. Me, as the non-contributor, I'm easily forgotten.

 

If "competition" means "to be at the top and be remembered long after the game is gone", then be it so.

But then I won't be queuing anymore, because some people decide to dominate everything else - because being at the top = domination over everything else - making everyone else look loke a Scrub, even if they are decent. Because overall domination is like a flash of light shining on a few people - and creating the illusion of everyone else just being BAD, because in a flash, everything else looks so much darker than with natural light. It's like with back light.

 

What I'm also noticing in this discussion is something that I know from the PvP forum : People make the devs responsible for something that was actually driven by the players themselves - like "the devs not giving new maps" being the cause of Newbies getting steamrolled by aces and therefore staying away from GSF, this dwindling GFS's population. Great logic.

Edited May 24, 2015 by AlrikFassbauer

[Lowfrequenzy]

What I'm also noticing in this discussion is something that I know from the PvP forum : People make the devs responsible for something that was actually driven by the players themselves - like "the devs not giving new maps" being the cause of Newbies getting steamrolled by aces and therefore staying away from GSF, this dwindling GFS's population. Great logic.

 

You should acknowledge that most if not all participants in this discussion agree, that it would help if newbies had the chance to practice more. The tutorial does very little in this area and seeing the question "how do I use my rockets" so often, I doubt that people even use it. It is quite hidden. I do not remember anyone stating, that it is the lack of new maps, that gives newbies a hard time. Even after somewhat like 500 games across several characters I still learn some new ways to fly around Kuat Mesas. I still can not tell you reliable, where which powerup spawns. New maps would just show, that there still is someone working on GSF.

 

Your stance bears the problem, that in favour for the fun of newbies people with experience should not use that experience.That means they do not have fun. You can only fly so many ships and at one point they are simply mastered. You can not escape that. Now should a fully mastered character not be used until there is a super serious night? You drive those people away that are the core of the flying population.

 

Even for a at best mediocre player like myself it is not much fun winning 50-5 or 1000-10 and then finding myself at the top of the board at the end. I like games where I am challanged, but I don't want to be challanged by the game mechanics (aka how do I shoot missiles, how do I aim, why did I crash, ...) , I want to be challanged by other pilots. And this is where developers come in.

[tommmsunb]

You should acknowledge that most if not all participants in this discussion agree, that it would help if newbies had the chance to practice more. The tutorial does very little in this area and seeing the question "how do I use my rockets" so often, I doubt that people even use it. It is quite hidden. I do not remember anyone stating, that it is the lack of new maps, that gives newbies a hard time. Even after somewhat like 500 games across several characters I still learn some new ways to fly around Kuat Mesas. I still can not tell you reliable, where which powerup spawns. New maps would just show, that there still is someone working on GSF.

 

Your stance bears the problem, that in favour for the fun of newbies people with experience should not use that experience.That means they do not have fun. You can only fly so many ships and at one point they are simply mastered. You can not escape that. Now should a fully mastered character not be used until there is a super serious night? You drive those people away that are the core of the flying population.

 

Even for a at best mediocre player like myself it is not much fun winning 50-5 or 1000-10 and then finding myself at the top of the board at the end. I like games where I am challanged, but I don't want to be challanged by the game mechanics (aka how do I shoot missiles, how do I aim, why did I crash, ...) , I want to be challanged by other pilots. And this is where developers come in.

 

Really don't bother responding to Alrik, he's the kinda guy who will quote himself in an argument and has done it multiple times. He will also use whatever pseudo-science he can find to support his opinions without looking at the merit/credibility of the article in question.

Edited May 24, 2015 by tommmsunb

[jordocaust]

Back to the OP's points (opinions?)...

 

I've been playing GSF for a while now, but I'm no ace. I have a couple ships mastered on my main GSF toon (Celchu, pub, Shadowlands), but I just rolled a new toon last week on Bastion and decided to queue up for some solo matches...

 

It may be anecdotal, but comparing my first games on Bastion last week with stock ships to my first games on Shadowlands... wow... It's not the gear. It's not the mastered ships, or the "teams of aces" going up against you... it's skill and experience.

 

I remembered how much it sucked when I first faceplanted into the GSF learning curve last year. I knew I would die a lot starting from scratch on Bastion and was preparing to just grind it out a bit until I had the req to start making some builds... But it turns out I was surprising myself getting in the top 5 of each match with stock ships (mainly scouts).

 

This made me a believer for sure, and makes the stats of the aces that much more impressive. It's not their upgrades (though they can give an edge), it's skill.

Edited May 25, 2015 by jordocaust
phrasing