Anyone wanna go shoot some bombers on Harbinger?

[Lendul]

I've done more than one SS night... we just haven't had them in ages. Not sure what point was being made though?

Multiple bombers isn't just the best way to beat newer players it is the best way to beat veteran players on domination as well. The same can be said of of TDM in serious matches the the Meta squad is T1GS,T2 Bomber,T2 Scout, GS/Scout flex.

[SeCKSEgai]

Multiple bombers isn't just the best way to beat newer players it is the best way to beat veteran players on domination as well. The same can be said of of TDM in serious matches the the Meta squad is T1GS,T2 Bomber,T2 Scout, GS/Scout flex.

 

There's a difference between multiple bomber and bomber spam tho

 

It's not unusual to see 6 out of 8 ships in full bomber mode on harby on a sat match anymore.

[Lendul]

There's a difference between multiple bomber and bomber spam tho

 

It's not unusual to see 6 out of 8 ships in full bomber mode on harby on a sat match anymore.

Have you considered that newer players are spamming bombers because it is easier for them?

[SeCKSEgai]

Have you considered that newer players are spamming bombers because it is easier for them?

 

You're misunderstanding. It's more experienced players bomber spamming new pilots =p. New pilots running bombers is a good thing because they're generally a lot more effective than they would be in the standard issue fighter/scout.

[RickDagles]

I'm really surprised you guys are complaining about bomber spam. Why not hop into a T1 gunship any enjoy a bunch of 150k damage games? You might not win but those numbers sure are pretty!

 

.

 

 

You can't fault these guys for flying the ship that's most effective for them. Beacon bombers stack really well and the skill floor is quite low. It's their best chance to win against someone who has been playing the game for 3 years. If you had a few decent players on your team you'd probably win and they would have to adjust their tactics.

Edited February 29, 2016 by RickDagles

[DomiSotto]

Oh, boy. This is going to be an interesting week. I was just about to have enough geld to get That Second Bomber That Can Heal People. Edited February 29, 2016 by DomiSotto

[Lendul]

I'm really surprised you guys are complaining about bomber spam. Why not hop into a T1 gunship any enjoy a bunch of 150k damage games? You might not win but those numbers sure are pretty!

 

.

 

 

You can't fault these guys for flying the ship that's most effective for them. Beacon bombers stack really well and the skill floor is quite low. It's their best chance to win against someone who has been playing the game for 3 years. If you had a few decent players on your team you'd probably win and they would have to adjust their tactics.

I have been resisting the urge to post something like this all week. If it is literally a game with 6 bomber then what is stopping them from unleashing repressive Ion Fire. It's like people do not know how to GS now that Sleeth has left the server. Same can be said of scout since WIllie and Touchdown are scarce. Sometimes it's hard to reason with people once they have "played thousands of games".

[caederon]

I have been resisting the urge to post something like this all week. If it is literally a game with 6 bomber then what is stopping them from unleashing repressive Ion Fire. It's like people do not know how to GS now that Sleeth has left the server. Same can be said of scout since WIllie and Touchdown are scarce. Sometimes it's hard to reason with people once they have "played thousands of games".

I assume that remark is directed at me, since I was the one who commented on playing two thousand plus games on Harb as some evidence towards the validity of my observations.

 

So, say what's on your mind, and don't dance around it. It would be comical if you tried to make the argument that I 'do not know how to GS' but please, go ahead. Your resistance is futile. Reason with me, and explain how this is all just people from 'backwater servers' causing trouble.

 

I already have enough 150k+ games against bomber spam. They are so old hat to me that there is little enjoyment to be gained from it. The situation often degenerates into getting 3-capped if (as is frequent) the team you get stuck on is completely incompetent, so even the modest thrill of another potential 150k+ game is removed.

 

Persistent faction imbalance sucks. Ruining any semblance of gameplay with bomber spam against teams of new pilots sucks. I don't see why there is any reason to argue against these points.

 

Despon

[Lendul]

I assume that remark is directed at me, since I was the one who commented on playing two thousand plus games on Harb as some evidence towards the validity of my observations.

 

 

Despon

Actually it wasn't, but it the shoe fits. If it is bomber spam then deal with it. If there are enough scout and GS to stop you then you don't have a bomber problem. There is no faction imbalance on The Harbinger. The good players and groupers play on both sides. You can complain that your team is not good enough to allow your GS to counter the bombers until you are blue in the face. That doesn't make the position viable or even true. I have seen the outlier screen shots where you cherry pick to promote this position. I still am calling both of you out for exaggerating to make yourselves seem right. If this was really a true problem you should be able to produce dozens of screenshots from just a couple days of play.

[caederon]

Actually it wasn't, but it the shoe fits. If it is bomber spam then deal with it. If there are enough scout and GS to stop you then you don't have a bomber problem. There is no faction imbalance on The Harbinger. The good players and groupers play on both sides. You can complain that your team is not good enough to allow your GS to counter the bombers until you are blue in the face. That doesn't make the position viable or even true. I have seen the outlier screen shots where you cherry pick to promote this position. I still am calling both of you out for exaggerating to make yourselves seem right. If this was really a true problem you should be able to produce dozens of screenshots from just a couple days of play.

You have utterly blown my mind.

 

I played on that server constantly, for well over a year, until a very clear and pronounced pattern of play made me so sick of it that I left.

 

If you don't think it's true that solo-queuing into a team of inexperienced and or incapable players makes it impossible to have a competitive game against teams that are comprised of more than half bombers, then maybe you're playing a different game than me. Maybe you're so skilled at GSF that you alone with no support can dislodge a half-dozen bombers and it's no problem at all.

 

I reported my own experiences, I didn't cherry pick screenshots to back it up. I am not trying to get bombers banned, I'm not complaining about ship balance, I am complaining about a trend that I personally witnessed enough to drive me off of the only server where you can get pops basically any time you want them.

 

What do you think my motive is here, other than to make it suck less?

 

Despon

[ALaggyGrunt]

Actually it wasn't, but it the shoe fits. If it is bomber spam then deal with it. If there are enough scout and GS to stop you then you don't have a bomber problem. There is no faction imbalance on The Harbinger. The good players and groupers play on both sides. You can complain that your team is not good enough to allow your GS to counter the bombers until you are blue in the face. That doesn't make the position viable or even true. I have seen the outlier screen shots where you cherry pick to promote this position. I still am calling both of you out for exaggerating to make yourselves seem right. If this was really a true problem you should be able to produce dozens of screenshots from just a couple days of play.

 

It's very common to have a game so thick with bombers you have to hunt 2-3 beacons before you even think about trying to kill one of the minelayers. The rest of it is just a raw and massive blob of HP and drones and turrets which can't be hurt by any team of low-tier ships. You are welcome to prove us wrong by finding 8 friends with totally stock ships to take shots at one of these blobs.

[RickDagles]

Despon - anyone with a brain knows that you're a top gunship pilot. But you can't win alone against a half decent team. The problem here is that Harb actually has a lot of half decent pilots. It would be nearly as difficult for you to win if they had a balanced meta of ships. The solution? Find a friend or three and queue together. Problem solved. Edited March 1, 2016 by RickDagles

[Lendul]

Despon - anyone with a brain knows that you're a top gunship pilot..

I agree with this 100%. I also know a pity party when I see one and I am not attending.

[ALaggyGrunt]

Despon - anyone with a brain knows that you're a top gunship pilot. But you can't win alone against a half decent team. The problem here is that Harb actually has a lot of half decent pilots. It would be nearly as difficult for you to win if they had a balanced meta of ships. The solution? Find a friend or three and queue together. Problem solved.

 

Small problem solved.

Big problem is there's only one server where you can almost always get a queue pop, not 9. Making all three sats so thick with mines and drones you can't even approach it with a stock ship is very anti-newbie. I've started new chars and been a two-shipper in a whole team of two-shippers facing exactly that tactic.

Despon's point is: this tactic makes the game very un-fun for newbies, and he is correct. Flying around these mine and drone balls in the two stock ships because there's nothing these ships can shoot at them which will actually hurt them is not fun. What's even worse is this doesn't teach newbies how to fly, except maybe that they need to make a minedroneblob of their own.

[SeCKSEgai]

Despon - anyone with a brain knows that you're a top gunship pilot. But you can't win alone against a half decent team. The problem here is that Harb actually has a lot of half decent pilots. It would be nearly as difficult for you to win if they had a balanced meta of ships. The solution? Find a friend or three and queue together. Problem solved.

 

It doesn't solve anything - if the issue is bomber spam against new pilots, fielding a team of not so new pilots means that it's not applicable.

[SeCKSEgai]

I agree with this 100%. I also know a pity party when I see one and I am not attending.

 

It's like some people recognize that newer players are struggling

 

and others think its just experienced pilots getting lousy teams and complaining.

[caederon]

I agree with this 100%. I also know a pity party when I see one and I am not attending.

I have no desire for nor need of pity, and I don't know why you're interpreting anything I've posted as an attempt to engender it.

 

Playing on or against teams who take an easy-way-out approach to steamrolling new players has no appeal to me. It took a few weeks of flying game after game against teams whose sole solution, win or lose, to any problem was 'throw more bombers at it' before I got so disgusted that I was at 0% enjoyment level. That is the experience I had, I'm not making it up, exaggerating it, or overstating it.

 

I would be very happy indeed to be able to log into Harbinger (being the only server with a near certainty of getting quick pops) and know there was at least a 50/50 chance of winding up in a competitive match. I'd love to see it get back to that.

 

The best GSF I've experienced in the last few months was the SRW conquest event, largely because it contrived a situation where there were enough pilots that knew what they were doing that blowouts were not the regular course of events regardless of who I was grouped with or solo queuing into. Harbinger could be like that all the time, and for a stretch of a few months it actually was. I'm not sure when the tenor of the server shifted, but it did, and it was distinct, and from my personal perspective, it has gone downhill since... resulting in this mess of forum posting by various people. Where there's smoke, there's fire. I'm not the lone dissenter, some disgruntled curmudgeon. One way or another it'd be nice to see the problem get fixed.

 

Despon

Edited March 1, 2016 by caederon

[SeCKSEgai]

 

The best GSF I've experienced in the last few months was the SRW conquest event, largely because it contrived a situation where there were enough pilots that knew what they were doing that blowouts were not the regular course of events regardless of who I was grouped with or solo queuing into. Harbinger could be like that all the time, and for a stretch of a few months it actually was. I'm not sure when the tenor of the server shifted, but it did, and it was distinct, and from my personal perspective, it has gone downhill since... resulting in this mess of forum posting by various people. Where there's smoke, there's fire. I'm not the lone dissenter, some disgruntled curmudgeon. One way or another it'd be nice to see the problem get fixed.

 

Despon

 

Now that I've had time to process it all, I think the only thing that's actually changed is people leaving or general lack of participation. It used to be a lot more competitive, but it hasn't been groups getting dramatically better so much as a continuous lack of experienced pilots. The harby shuffle was going on then, the only difference before was that there were enough experienced folk around to keep things from getting out of hand. Now with the population on further decline, there's less incentive for newer players. I barely found the incentive to eat the losses long enough to get better then. I don't think it's plausible to for the new players to do so now. But it did take me several months so maybe there are a few out there just waiting for it all to click.

[Deavastro]

Not that I haven't been in matches with bomber spam, buuut its mostly a response of below avg-above avg players to counter aces on the opposing team. ie if you are facing alot of bomber spam its probably cause of you/your reputation.

The other case of bomber spam I see is not about the number of bombers but the inadequacies of the pilots/ships on the other side being unable to kill the bombers fast enough.

Basically its a matter of team balancing (as is most problems). Ganging up to hunt down those flying bombers may not be the solution thats required. Despoon try running a lesser known alt, you'll probably face less bomber spam matches.

 

This is based on my experience as an avg pilot flying about 5-7 matches a day on various times, multiple toons, on both factions for over a 6 months.

[Greezt]

Not that I haven't been in matches with bomber spam, buuut its mostly a response of below avg-above avg players to counter aces on the opposing team. ie if you are facing alot of bomber spam its probably cause of you/your reputation.

The other case of bomber spam I see is not about the number of bombers but the inadequacies of the pilots/ships on the other side being unable to kill the bombers fast enough.

Basically its a matter of team balancing (as is most problems). Ganging up to hunt down those flying bombers may not be the solution thats required. Despoon try running a lesser known alt, you'll probably face less bomber spam matches.

 

This is based on my experience as an avg pilot flying about 5-7 matches a day on various times, multiple toons, on both factions for over a 6 months.

 

That's not true. I've been in games with a bunch of two shippers and we still had 5 or more bombers against us on harbinger. It's just something with the server mentality.

[Danalon]

I'm not from Harbinger, however there is something I'd like to call arms-race matches.

 

I'll use a deathmatch as example. It usually happens when my side has 2-3 good pilots and 5-6 new pilots while the other team is mostly consisting of average pilots with 6-7 of them having 4-5 ships to choose from. At first the other team thinks it's going to win easily, because they only see 2-3 people with 5 ships on our team (my wingman and I have lots of alts and usually aren't recognized by others) while themselves having a lot of 5-shippers. They choose their ships relatively random from what I can tell but soon realize they get killed by the same 2-3 people again and again and they can't keep up with the kill count. Over the course of the match their team is stacking more and more gunships to counter our good pilots - and even with passive evasion it's hard to not get hit when having 4-5 people shooting at you. They stack more and more gunships because they'll try to farm our beginners faster than our good pilots can kill them, making it virtually impossible to effectively kill them with scouts - we're not aces, just above average. That's when we switch to gunships and it becomes a 3v7 railgun standoff, with us trying to kill their gunships faster than their gunships can kill our beginners. (On a side note, I dislke new players who keep flying into gunship walls even when told multiple times to stay in cover or at least manage their boost so they're actually a distraction to the enemies instead of just cannon fodder.)

 

The other team does the right thing in that situation, they adapt to the match and change their ships to turn the game in their favor. Can't blame them.

 

Similar things happen with bombers in domination. The game starts "normal" but at some point we drown in enemy bombers trying to take a node. (On a side note, I dislike new players who don't stay close to a green satellite so it stays green in case the "main defender" dies.)

 

However, those games are also the reason for me to fly with my/a wingman whenever possible. When I'm the only good pilot and the other team starts stacking whatever ship against my team I usually can't do much, but flying with a wingman helps to keep the situation under control most of the time.

Edited March 2, 2016 by Danalon