Whoah

[Nemarus]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhOsXThHWQM

[SithAceI]

Whoah is right!

 

And everyone thought Q pops were bad now... they will be non-existent after this drops LOL!

 

Also you all will know were I will be when ya don't see Sithace flying on any servers hehe.

 

Hell I am buying the PC and PS4 versions to play with all you guys on PC and with my Son on PS4!

Edited August 3, 2015 by SithAceI

[Nemarus]

Whoah is right!

 

And everyone thought Q pops were bad now... they will be non-existent after this drops LOL!

 

Also you all will know were I will be when ya don't see Sithace flying on any servers hehe.

 

Hell I am buying the PC and PS4 versions to play with all you guys on PC and with my Son on PS4!

 

We'll see how it goes. It looks pretty, and it looks fast, but the HUD looks pretty simple. If this doesn't have any mechanical depth, then it will just end up being a point-and-shoot zerg fest. Aces need a certain level of complexity they can master in order to separate themselves from the masses.

 

Also, I worry my PC won't be able to handle it. I'll probably play it on Xbox One. That's where most of my console friends are, and Xbox LIVE generally has more robust multiplayer (though the gap is closing). Also, with Windows 10, I can stream Battlefront from my Xbox to my PC, so the Lady can watch her television. For anyone on Xbox LIVE, feel free to add me as a friend and shoot me a message, saying you're a GSFer. My Gamertag is Nemarus.

 

Regardless, I am definitely worried about queue pops this fall and winter. Even those who don't stray far from SWTOR will be busy running through KotFE. Though I'll still be queuing while doing so, apart from during cinematics.

 

But yeah, come mid-November, I'll definitely be rocking a TIE Interceptor for a while.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Nemarus

[caederon]

The graphics are nice, but there is not much information being conveyed by that HUD at all. That doesn't suggest great gameplay depth. Seems like more of a reflex-based shooter than anything requiring much tactical consideration. Probably not interesting enough to pry me away from GSF, but I'll stay open minded until more concrete info is released.

 

Despon

[zaskar]

Here is my prediction, let's see if I'm right in January

 

I full expect the vets around here to switch to Battlefront. GSF will live on and the queues will stay like they are, the core new to intermediate players will still queue to see what it is about or as a distraction. The concept of gsf only anything or "aces" will fade away like open world pvp on Ilum.

[CrazyOldMystic]

GSF has never been about Aces, the fact of the mater is, gunships continue to drive players away. They continue to be the cheat ship. Now I am not saying they are indestructible because they are now. A perfect example of this, and it depicts the problem perfectly, is a match I had with some friends. We were empire side fighting the pubs fighter on fighter, and we were cleaning there clocks good. As soon as they realized they were losing they switched to gunships. Now a game is not balanced if a player must switch to another ship to counter such a move. In short we lost. This is why gsf suffers and continues to suffer.

 

I played swg, they got several things right in gsf, that we never had in swg. At the same time this trailer if fing hilarious. I can not recall how many damn times I got mocked, ridiculed, and trolled. When I kept saying cockpit view is NEEDED for any star wars star fighter game. BUT NO why the hell would we do that lol. Here comes battlefront with what? Oh yea cockpit view lol.

 

This game about aces thats just funny. These days people start losing, they pull out the gunships, I could never lower myself to that level. At least in battlefront it will be about fighter on fighter, like it should have been here.

Edited August 3, 2015 by CrazyOldMystic

[Ramalina]

Well they were sneaky with the camera angles and distances, but it looked very much to me like the maximum altitude of those space fighters was maybe 100m or so, and that most of the, "high speed," was in fact blur generated by a combination of a camera position close to the ship and a ship flying extremely close to all of the visual references.

 

In other words, it looks no less like, "landspeeder wars," than the last Battlefront teaser video that got posted on this forum.

 

It's possible that they've done a lot of development since then, or that the starfighters will have a space battlefield where they act significantly different than they do when providing close air support over ground battlefields.

 

The care that they took with camera shots to make sure that there's no actual hints about how large the 3D space is or how maneuverable the fighters are does tend to make me suspicious in a pessimistic way though.

 

Of course, I'm more accustomed to DCS and Star Citizen teaser videos where they try to really showcase the craft in the gameplay video sections of teasers.

 

 

Maybe this is being too harsh on them. It's not even really a teaser. It's a teaser for a teaser, and maybe the bar for teaser squared videos is set so low that they have to dig a trench to get the bar in?

 

 

 

Nice cinematography though.

[caederon]

GSF has never been about Aces, the fact of the mater is, gunships continue to drive players away. They continue to be the cheat ship. Now I am not saying they are indestructible because they are now. A perfect example of this, and it depicts the problem perfectly, is a match I had with some friends. We were empire side fighting the pubs fighter on fighter, and we were cleaning there clocks good. As soon as they realized they were losing they switched to gunships. Now a game is not balanced if a player must switch to another ship to counter such a move. In short we lost. This is why gsf suffers and continues to suffer.

Do you realize that what you are saying is 'I should never be forced to alter my tactics! My enemy altered their tactics and that is unfair." What your enemy did was smart, they realized that what they were doing was not working, and so they altered their tactics. You plodded ahead like dinosaurs trapped in the primordial tar, unable to adapt to changing conditions, and died. That is how it is supposed to work. Perhaps you and your friends might consider the value of reacting to changing circumstances.

 

Maybe Battlefront won't require you to alter tactics, and you can just blast away with no fear of having to consider the larger scope of the battle. Maybe a simpler, less mentally taxing game is right for you.

 

Despon

Edited August 3, 2015 by caederon

[Nemarus]

Well they were sneaky with the camera angles and distances, but it looked very much to me like the maximum altitude of those space fighters was maybe 100m or so, and that most of the, "high speed," was in fact blur generated by a combination of a camera position close to the ship and a ship flying extremely close to all of the visual references.

 

In other words, it looks no less like, "landspeeder wars," than the last Battlefront teaser video that got posted on this forum.

 

It's possible that they've done a lot of development since then, or that the starfighters will have a space battlefield where they act significantly different than they do when providing close air support over ground battlefields.

 

The care that they took with camera shots to make sure that there's no actual hints about how large the 3D space is or how maneuverable the fighters are does tend to make me suspicious in a pessimistic way though.

 

Of course, I'm more accustomed to DCS and Star Citizen teaser videos where they try to really showcase the craft in the gameplay video sections of teasers.

 

 

Maybe this is being too harsh on them. It's not even really a teaser. It's a teaser for a teaser, and maybe the bar for teaser squared videos is set so low that they have to dig a trench to get the bar in?

 

 

 

Nice cinematography though.

 

I think you need to wait two days.

 

As you said, this was a teaser for a teaser. This looks pretty, it looks fast. It has A-wings and TIE Interceptors, which we didn't know would be in Battlefront until now. That's all the post was meant to say.

 

As for "landspeeder wars", I don't see how you can say that given the final shot in the clouds. It looks like there is a ton of vertical space to play with.

 

Even in the Alpha, which only had Walker Assault on Hoth, the skybox for TIE's and X-wings to play in was enormous--far larger than the actual ground battle map.

 

It's not hard to render open space. The maps will be as large as they need to be. I'm actually more worried that the maps for Fighter Squadron will be too open, without significant reasons to descend into interesting terrain.

 

For example, they keep showing X-wings chasing TIE's through canyons because it looks cool. But it also makes no sense. If you're chasing someone and they descend into a canyon, you just fly above them and take pot-shots. They'll never be able to outrun you or fire back.

 

Whereas you take a map like Kuat TDM, which I think is the best PvP map in the game. Every portion of that map gets action, and every location has a strong sense of place and purpose and orientation. The canyons walls sometimes take up 3/4 of the vertical space, and the canyons themselves have bulbous laser drills and scaffolding to provide cover from opponents aiming downward.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Nemarus

[Archonitek]

GSF has never been about Aces, the fact of the mater is, gunships continue to drive players away. They continue to be the cheat ship. Now I am not saying they are indestructible because they are now. A perfect example of this, and it depicts the problem perfectly, is a match I had with some friends. We were empire side fighting the pubs fighter on fighter, and we were cleaning there clocks good. As soon as they realized they were losing they switched to gunships. Now a game is not balanced if a player must switch to another ship to counter such a move. In short we lost. This is why gsf suffers and continues to suffer.

 

I played swg, they got several things right in gsf, that we never had in swg. At the same time this trailer if fing hilarious. I can not recall how many damn times I got mocked, ridiculed, and trolled. When I kept saying cockpit view is NEEDED for any star wars star fighter game. BUT NO why the hell would we do that lol. Here comes battlefront with what? Oh yea cockpit view lol.

 

This game about aces thats just funny. These days people start losing, they pull out the gunships, I could never lower myself to that level. At least in battlefront it will be about fighter on fighter, like it should have been here.

 

Remarkably, my KDA goes up when the other side field's heavy gunships

[zaskar]

As soon as someone says "... swg... " I tune out. This is not a sandbox, it will never be a sandbox and the tech can't support anything like it. Apple, meet an orange.

[phalczen]

As soon as someone says "... swg... " I tune out. This is not a sandbox, it will never be a sandbox and the tech can't support anything like it. Apple, meet an orange.

 

Xwing, XWA, XWvTF, etc were also not sandbox games and those games' tech could never support what GSF does and that doesn't stop people from making those comparisons.

 

Future SW space combat sims can always learn from the lessons of their predecessors, and I have no doubt that DICE looked at things that succeeded in XW, TF, XWvTF, XWA, SWG: Jump to Lightspeed, and GSF to help with their design, even if not directly emulating or duplicating features from those games.

 

Thanks for posting Nem.

[Lavaar]

GSF has never been about Aces, the fact of the mater is, gunships continue to drive players away. They continue to be the cheat ship. Now I am not saying they are indestructible because they are now. A perfect example of this, and it depicts the problem perfectly, is a match I had with some friends. We were empire side fighting the pubs fighter on fighter, and we were cleaning there clocks good. As soon as they realized they were losing they switched to gunships. Now a game is not balanced if a player must switch to another ship to counter such a move. In short we lost. This is why gsf suffers and continues to suffer....

 

...This game about aces thats just funny. These days people start losing, they pull out the gunships, I could never lower myself to that level. At least in battlefront it will be about fighter on fighter, like it should have been here.

 

I think you may be unfamiliar with the concept of balance. Gunships have strengths and weaknesses, and for those who fail to adapt to their unique strengths, they can be deadly. That your pride blinds you to the alternatives does not illustrate a failure with the game design, no matter how much you may have convinced yourself of it. Furthermore, to remove gunships from the game would wildly tip the balance away from a tactical, objective based team game into a twitch-centric blast-em-up, which would get old for most people fairly quickly.

 

I can understand the frustration, and I understand how players can be frustrated by tactics that they cannot immediately respond to. But to imply that the game is broken due to personal preference is a dangerous thing to take seriously.

[CrazyOldMystic]

Do you realize that what you are saying is 'I should never be forced to alter my tactics! My enemy altered their tactics and that is unfair." What your enemy did was smart, they realized that what they were doing was not working, and so they altered their tactics. You plodded ahead like dinosaurs trapped in the primordial tar, unable to adapt to changing conditions, and died. That is how it is supposed to work. Perhaps you and your friends might consider the value of reacting to changing circumstances.

 

Maybe Battlefront won't require you to alter tactics, and you can just blast away with no fear of having to consider the larger scope of the battle. Maybe a simpler, less mentally taxing game is right for you.

 

Despon

 

There was nothing smart about it. Adjusting tactics is normal, like when your in a strike, and the other guy is a scout. You do not try to match them turn for turn or speed for speed. Instead you adjust your tactics and send proton torpedo's there way. Now thats adjusting your tactics. What you are talking about is change ships completely just to be able to match the other guy and turn it into snipe wars. Where the blazes was that in any show or movie of star wars? I remember dog fights all over the place, and i remember bombing runs. No gunship picking off fighters at a 10k+ range. Yes a player should have to adjust his tactics as the battle goes but a player should NOT have to change ships to a bloody gunship so we can play snipe wars. That is how I see it. I know enough players that do gsf to know they are as fed up as I am with gunships ruining matches by trying to turn it into snipe wars.

[Nemarus]

This thread went off track, but I do think it is fair to say that Gunships are a detriment to GSF. Not because they are unbalanced when upgraded, but because they are unbalanced stock. In the hands of a new pilot, a stock railgun of any kind is better than most components fully upgraded, purely by virtue of its range and the simplicity of its use. A new Gunship pilot can contribute significantly to his team without understanding much at all about GSF. He flies forward until his scanners show an enemy. That often means the enemy is already within 15km. He right-clicks to enter railgun mode, lines up a shot and charges up to fire at a distant, slow-moving, usually unaware target. It is all super intuitive, and the pilot doesn't need to know anything about lead indicators or even power management. In truth, it is most like the PvE space game.

 

Eventually, he gets noticed and is killed. But often not before he did damage or got a few kills himself. This is an entirely different experience from someone trying to learn Scout or Strike, which immediately demand comprehension of boost management, weapon range, and lead indicators.

 

Bombers fall somewhere in between.

 

The end result is that many new pilots drift toward Gunship, believing it is "what they are best at" when really the truth is that everyone is best at Gunship starting out, because anyone can be offensively competent in a Gunship. It is in defense and survivability that the true Gunship aces distinguish themselves.

 

Unfortunately, those individuals who do not enjoy Gunshipping (usually because they have legitimate-but-overly-romantic notions of "true dogfighting") feel like the game is biased against their success and enjoyment, and instead favors "space snipers". And at the low level, they are correct. Stock Gunships will obliterate stock anything else every time.

 

And even at max level, with experienced pilots, the game remains biased against the Strikes--the X-wings--the most romanticized of Star Wars fighter craft.

 

So yeah--when someone disparages GSF by attacking Flashfires and Manglers, I can see where they are coming from. Star Wars fans expect X-wings to do well in Starfighter combat. But instead, GSF is dominated by TIE's and A-wings wielding shotguns and armadas of flying sniper turrets.

 

Those of us who enjoy GSF have come to appreciate it for what it is, but there are legitimate reasons why queues are dying on some servers, and the utter dominance of Gunships and Flashfires are indeed numbered amongst those reasons.

 

If Battlefront delivers a more iconic Starfighter experience that matches the general fandom's expectations, then it will definitely draw away a lot of dissatisfied GSFers.

Edited August 4, 2015 by Nemarus

[Lavaar]

There was nothing smart about it. Adjusting tactics is normal, like when your in a strike, and the other guy is a scout. You do not try to match them turn for turn or speed for speed. Instead you adjust your tactics and send proton torpedo's there way. Now thats adjusting your tactics. What you are talking about is change ships completely just to be able to match the other guy and turn it into snipe wars. Where the blazes was that in any show or movie of star wars? I remember dog fights all over the place, and i remember bombing runs. No gunship picking off fighters at a 10k+ range. Yes a player should have to adjust his tactics as the battle goes but a player should NOT have to change ships to a bloody gunship so we can play snipe wars. That is how I see it. I know enough players that do gsf to know they are as fed up as I am with gunships ruining matches by trying to turn it into snipe wars.

 

The counter to the gunships is a fast and tough to hit scout. The counter for a scout is absolutely not proton torpedoes.

[zaskar]

This thread went off track...

 

Did you really expect anything different? Everyone loves to complain about what they can't change.

[caederon]

A new Gunship pilot can contribute significantly to his team without understanding much at all about GSF. He flies forward until his scanners show an enemy.

Uh....

That often means the enemy is already within 15km. He right-clicks to enter railgun mode, lines up a shot and charges up to fire at a distant, slow-moving, usually unaware target. It is all super intuitive, and the pilot doesn't need to know anything about lead indicators or even power management.

Uhhhh....

Eventually, he gets noticed and is killed. But often not before he did damage or got a few kills himself. This is an entirely different experience from someone trying to learn Scout or Strike, which immediately demand comprehension of boost management, weapon range, and lead indicators.

(stuff)

... the truth is that everyone is best at Gunship starting out, because anyone can be offensively competent in a Gunship.

I'd love to meet these offensively competent noobs you seem to encounter. Maybe they are all on TEH and not on any other server? Because I have not seen them. Stock gunships can't hit scouts without a lot of luck, and they are made of paper. If they screw up their power management, they not only can't get into the fight, they also can't get out of a fight. If rookie gunship pilots doing 10k damage in a match (if they're lucky) are the problem that is hurting GSF, we may as well fold up the tents and go home.

 

If you want to complain about stock problems, which is a made up issue, then talk about stock T1 bomber vs. stock ships, which can literally become invincible versus stocks for periods of time with charged plating. Not to mention that new pilots are 100% clueless about how to avoid flying into a stationary minefield.

 

The one real problem with GSF is that all the players are spread out onto many servers. If we had cross server, and the player base for GSF was all in one place, the matchmaker could set up properly seeded matches and pops would be hassle-free to get for everyone. If people were competing against those of like-skill, all this handwringing over ship classes would be moot (aside from the legitimate need to get strikes up to par)

 

Despon

Edited August 4, 2015 by caederon

[MaximilianPower]

There was nothing smart about it. Adjusting tactics is normal, like when your in a strike, and the other guy is a scout. You do not try to match them turn for turn or speed for speed. Instead you adjust your tactics and send proton torpedo's there way. Now thats adjusting your tactics. What you are talking about is change ships completely just to be able to match the other guy and turn it into snipe wars. Where the blazes was that in any show or movie of star wars? I remember dog fights all over the place, and i remember bombing runs. No gunship picking off fighters at a 10k+ range. Yes a player should have to adjust his tactics as the battle goes but a player should NOT have to change ships to a bloody gunship so we can play snipe wars. That is how I see it. I know enough players that do gsf to know they are as fed up as I am with gunships ruining matches by trying to turn it into snipe wars.

 

Re: the bolded - lolwut? is that a joke? you're not going to land a protorp against any remotely competent scout. if it does happen, it's luck, and not any kind of reliable tactic that you should rely on.

 

Yes, Sniper Wars happen, but a balanced and well-played team will take GS walls apart. Merely swapping to GS does not guarantee a win unless the opposition just doesn't know how to react.

[Fractalsponge]

<snip>

 

Listen to Despon people, that guy gets it.

Edited August 4, 2015 by Fractalsponge

[Fractalsponge]

Re: the bolded - lolwut? is that a joke? you're not going to land a protorp against any remotely competent scout. if it does happen, it's luck, and not any kind of reliable tactic that you should rely on.

 

Yes, Sniper Wars happen, but a balanced and well-played team will take GS walls apart. Merely swapping to GS does not guarantee a win unless the opposition just doesn't know how to react.

 

The only kernel of truth to the whingeing is that it is easier to set up a gunship/bomber wall than to counter it, but again it's more of an issue of having unreliable teammates. Matchmaking that is backed by a larger cross-server player pool should help immensely with that.

[Danalon]

I generally distrust trailers. It has happened way too often that a trailer was awesome but it turns out that all the good things in a trailer were literally all the good things in the game (or movie) while the rest was just boring and disappointing. This trailer, being so short looks to me like they want to hide as much as possible while trying to get some additional preorders/sales until they release the "full" trailer.

[CrazyOldMystic]

I guess when I have been shooting scouts down with a combination of proton torpedos and blaster fire, I have been seeing things?

 

What Nemarus said described and I think nailed the problem on the head. As for hard hitting scouts, thats exactly the problem right there. For a scout to become deadly you do not really get those aspects until spend 10k on the final upgrades, that is not to say the other upgrades are useless. Unlike a gunship which at base without any upgrades is extremely powerful damage wise.

 

On topic yes trailers can be deceptive, as we all found out on day one of launch on this game. I would like to believe battlefront will be as awesome as they say. Two problems first they seem eager, way too eager, to get people to pre order the game. The second problem its EA. In any case I think the q times for gsf will get a whole lot worse when battlefront goes live.

[caederon]

I guess when I have been shooting scouts down with a combination of proton torpedos and blaster fire, I have been seeing things?

What you have been seeing is bad scout pilots. Or, at best, very unlucky ones.

 

What Nemarus said described and I think nailed the problem on the head. As for hard hitting scouts, thats exactly the problem right there. For a scout to become deadly you do not really get those aspects until spend 10k on the final upgrades, that is not to say the other upgrades are useless. Unlike a gunship which at base without any upgrades is extremely powerful damage wise.

The stock T1 gs is not overpowering damage-wise. Its power curve is pretty similar to the T2 scout in terms of how much req you need to spend to get it into a reasonable state of usability. The minimum you need before a T1 gs becomes dangerous to average or better pilots include:

 

1. Slug Rail to 3rd tier (armor piercing)

2. Ion to 4th tier (AoE)

3. Buy BLC instead of LLC, get it to at least the 3rd tier so you have accuracy upgrades and more firing arc.

4. Get at bare minimum the 1st level of Barrel Roll so it doesn't cost your whole engine pool.

5. Get as much Lightweight armor, Large Reactor, Regeneration Extender as possible.

6a. Buy Distortion field, which really becomes most effective with all three upgrades, or...

6b. Use Feedback Shield, in which case you'll still die a lot but you can occasionally zap someone back.

... so you're looking at around at least 50k requisition before you are dangerous, and that's still a pretty good reach away from the maximum potential of the ship.

 

Stock gunships are slow, they turn slowly, they really have only one effective weapon (slug rail) and their accuracy isn't great until you upgrade. It is not 'extremely powerful' damage-wise and is very much not extremely survivable either.

 

Scouts come with 10% Evasion built right into the airframe before you even pick crew. If you pick an Evasion boosting crewman you're at 15%. If you get the base level of Distortion Field, you can boost that up even more. Maybe you might even use Running Interference copilot ability which is available by default to pubs. With minimal investment you can become very, very hard to hit. T2 scout comes with cluster missiles by default, which are good damage dealers, even stock. T1 scout comes with rockets, which with the first level of upgrade become armor piercing and are good damage dealers.

 

The problem is not gunships. The problem is not scouts. The problem is not even bombers.

 

The problem is the people flying them.

 

Despon

[arkanone]

GSF has never been about Aces, the fact of the mater is, gunships continue to drive players away. They continue to be the cheat ship. Now I am not saying they are indestructible because they are now. A perfect example of this, and it depicts the problem perfectly, is a match I had with some friends. We were empire side fighting the pubs fighter on fighter, and we were cleaning there clocks good. As soon as they realized they were losing they switched to gunships. Now a game is not balanced if a player must switch to another ship to counter such a move. In short we lost. This is why gsf suffers and continues to suffer.

 

This game about aces thats just funny. These days people start losing, they pull out the gunships, I could never lower myself to that level. At least in battlefront it will be about fighter on fighter, like it should have been here.

 

I've been watching this go on in MMOs since Ultima Online and Everquest. A gameplay mechanic or design philosophy is carved in stone by the developer and you're stuck in "their world". It doesn't matter if their pet project is running off customers--gunships in this case--they usually don't budge until it's too late.

 

If you want to keep playing GSF, the best you can do is adapt to the what's there. If you prefer to do something resembling flying and dogfighting, fly close to the gunships on your team and provide cover with your strike/scout. There's always going to be opposing players foolish enough to go after your gunships.

 

As to the guy acting like gunships take as much skill as a strike/scout, that's easy to prove wrong. Last night I got 4 kills in about a minute in a bone stock GS without even resetting the hotkeys. An 80 year old on prozac could have done that.