GSF should be updated

[wasteroiujhhb]

I have realized they should upgrade GSF maybe if at all re-balance it. I have played it for about a year now. and it feels like there are less and less matches now due to peoples frustration and op players basically solo kill entire teams.

 

Suggestions..

a. Re-balance scouts to do less damage. maybe take away Shields on scouts.

b. no more ship requisitions only fleet requisitions.

c. when you have all ships fully upgraded you should be able to convert fleet requisitions to cartel and or in game credits.

d. Take pods and missiles away from scouts primary weapons only.

e. Increase sensor range for scouts.

 

beef up armor, health, and shields on bombers and gunships.

Make options for gsf que for people with stock ships and multi/max upgrades, and have stock ship only matches for people who dont have upgrades. this will keep people in the game and give everyone a even match.

 

We are tired of people with scout ships killing people off in under a second - I have personally seen some players take out an entire teams which is very unrealistic and one sided.

 

 

 

No more red/dark teams if you have done all the ingame content. if you have done all the eternal content you automatically go into a general que and play on ether side. in return every play gets credit for their side of the force even if you are play for dark or light sides. this will balance out team more fairly.

 

Maybe add eternal star fighters and matches.

What about walker and speeder wars. We all have tons of speeders and would be great for maybe a carmageddon style matches.

 

Starwars chess games

Pet wars- like pokemon

companion wars- like pokemon

Boxing style matches, - no weapons no force.

Make GSF events to draw in more people to play and give the game more life.

 

Maybe ask EA where they put their punkbuster programs and add it to all of SWTOR. this would be great on getting rid of macro users like credit sale spammers.

 

At the way the developers are going about the game basically you going to wind up loosing more people and kill this game that has been active for so many years unless you start to add to and/or improve existing content.

Edited February 24, 2017 by wasteroiujhhb

[Lavaar]

Scouts aren't really OP right now, they have a lot of counters, and the game is surprisingly well balanced right now (except the strikes). I do find it quite entertaining that you consider scouts to be the problem, as most of the time on my server gunships are the constant gripe, and on other servers (harbinger) bombers seem to be the main complaint.

 

With regards to an update though? New content? Where do I sign?

[caederon]

and it feels like there are less and less matches now due to peoples frustration and op players basically solo kill entire teams.

I'm actually quite curious what server you play on, as I must echo Vexxial's point that the opinion of which ship class is OP / should be removed / needs all its components nerfed varies widely, geographically... and that tells you that if everyone thinks a different ship class is OP, it's probable that none of them are.

 

Nonetheless, your frustration is real... and your initial statement points out that it is with 'op players.' There is a method by which players get to be OP, or just ... P, I guess. That method is: they look critically at what they are doing and determine where they need to improve, then put their findings into practice. That's not always easy, but it will lead to results more real than calling for ___ to be nerfed. Ask that 'op player' how it is that they just steamrolled your whole team.

 

The techniques for succeeding at GSF are not secret, and can be applied to

or mastered. Stock flying is increasingly irrelevant with the amount of requisition that is being ladled out, and ships can be brought to a very competitive state in fifteen to twenty matches, if that. You just have to know what to upgrade and how to use it.

 

Arm yourself with knowledge, and you will be OP... P... competitive before too long. Good luck, and if you want to know how to address specific tactical situations or fight certain ship builds, ask that here (or on the GSF Discord).

 

Here are a couple starter tips on dealing with scouts:

• Scouts are very weak against Railgun Drones from Type2 bombers. The Railgun Drone ignores all Evasion boosts a scout may be running, and usually those keep a scout alive.
  
• If you're in a gunship, your best chance to hit scouts is with Wingman active, giving you a 20% Accuracy boost to make it much more likely your shots land.
  
• Developing an understanding of Evasion and Accuracy is key to dealing with scouts.
  

 

 

- Despon

Edited February 24, 2017 by caederon

[Verain]

Scouts are OP. But so are gunships and bombers! Everything but the strike has a role that it excels at (and the strike being bad is an acknowledge strike problem, and not some cause to call for nerfs to the 3/4 functioning ship classes: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8220295#edit8220295 ).

 

If you are personally having problems with scouts:

 

On a gunship, note that you aren't supposed to be that great versus scouts. In general, make sure you are using slug or ion (and slug is generally better for dealing with scouts in most situations), and turn on wingman when you can. Be sure that you take the "increased accuracy and tracking" talent (both slug and ion get this, but for slug it is a choice- be sure you make that choice). Once a scout closes in, you have three main choices, depending on what is going on. First, you can quickly relocate with barrel or powerdive to an area where a friendly bomber has set up bomber mines and drones. Scouts will be punished if they follow you there. Second, you can, if you are set up with a very aggressive build, attempt to melee the scout. None of the standard gunship builds are great at this, but there are some niche builds (feedback shield, light laser / retro thruster) that can be surprisingly effective. Third and your general fallback is to simply go somewhere with tight turns and other objects. This prevents the scout from using its superior maneuverability and speed to get position on you, and cycle your distortion shield until you have enough resources saved up to go to a better part of the map, where someone will peel for you.

 

On a bomber, it is mostly your advantage. While some scout builds can and will tear apart some bomber builds, you can always pick something better against scouts. The railgun drone ignores evasion- but what should be pointed out is that EVERY drone ignores evasion. Missile drone and interdiction likewise shoot shots that always hit. Mines also avoid evasion, and seismic mine avoids shields. Charged plating build bombers (be sure to take defensive armor crewman and damage reduction armor component) ignore some scout weapons (not the burst laser cannon and the rocket pods, but you don't care at ALL about clusters, quads, etc- they literally do single digit damage when you have your charged plating active), and in general your ability to deploy mines that act predictably and then use the mine as area denial should give you quite a bit of survival on a node or a nest. If you are frustrated versus most scouts in a bomber, then you should watch some bomber pilots play.

 

 

But my guess is that your experience comes from a strike or a gunship. A gunship shouldn't be sad that there's a ship that is better at dogfighting: it is a sniper with a valuable role, that just doesn't happen to be swatting scouts. A strike should be angry, but at the devs not fixing strikes, which is an acknowledged and open issue with the game.

 

 

 

Anyway, I hate all your ideas, but I hate your scout nerfs most of all. You are basically asking for the deletion of the scout class, and frankly, screw that.

 

 

Finally, the oddest thing you said is: "no more red/dark teams". The rest of your post implies that the queue should be split between people who have done the story content (and are on the alliance, or whatever the hell that is) and those who have not, which would, of course, effectively delete galactic starfighter completely, because no one would get a pop- the players are from all stages of the storyline, and some can't even do the chapter content anyway (and of those that can, many have not). But... I get why you would call imperials "red", but why would you call republic "dark" instead of blue? That's a really odd word choice.

[Nasja]

N.v.m. Troll post Edited February 25, 2017 by Nasja

[Ornithopoda]

Suggestions..

a. Re-balance scouts to do less damage. maybe take away Shields on scouts.

b. no more ship requisitions only fleet requisitions.

c. when you have all ships fully upgraded you should be able to convert fleet requisitions to cartel and or in game credits.

d. Take pods and missiles away from scouts primary weapons only.

e. Increase sensor range for scouts.

 

a. & d. This would render scouts virtually useless except for capping sats quickly at the beginning of DOM matches. This would also take away the only really effective counter to gunships, and if you're suggesting increasing the armor on gunships as well, they would be WAY to overpowered and unstoppable.

 

b. If you mean remove ship req and add that amount to fleet req, I could see that potentially helping new players, but as has already been pointed out, req is very easy to get quickly right now and how you use it is far more important than how fast you earn it.

 

c. There is no way they would ever create a consistent way for you to earn cartel coins in game. A good alternative idea would be to add an option to transfer fleet req to other characters in your legacy. This would help a lot for getting new alts in fighting shape quickly, and could even add a new way for them to make money off of GSF (That's the cynic in me talking )

 

e. Could be useful, but it seems to work pretty well as is. You don't really need to use tensor again after the first few seconds of a match anyway.

[Bolo_Yeung]

Surprisingly, nothing about nerfing railguns. Slug, with armor iugnore and shield piercing. Ion, leaving target ship a sitting duck...

Nothing about nerfing interdiction mines, lasting for 20 seconds and slowing ship to a crawl....

 

Guess what ships author of the topic is flying

[Verain]

Haha this is great, I get to agree with Bolo! Yea, I also think this is likely just a big class bash against scouts, from a gunship pilot.

[dizzyd]

I have realized they should upgrade GSF maybe if at all re-balance it. I have played it for about a year now. and it feels like there are less and less matches now due to peoples frustration and op players basically solo kill entire teams.

 

Suggestions..

a. Re-balance scouts to do less damage. maybe take away Shields on scouts.

b. no more ship requisitions only fleet requisitions.

c. when you have all ships fully upgraded you should be able to convert fleet requisitions to cartel and or in game credits.

d. Take pods and missiles away from scouts primary weapons only.

e. Increase sensor range for scouts.

 

beef up armor, health, and shields on bombers and gunships.

Make options for gsf que for people with stock ships and multi/max upgrades, and have stock ship only matches for people who dont have upgrades. this will keep people in the game and give everyone a even match.

 

We are tired of people with scout ships killing people off in under a second - I have personally seen some players take out an entire teams which is very unrealistic and one sided.

 

 

So, after a full year of playing you want to take away the first stepping stone any player has (Scout) to learn to fly. Yes if you do the intro quest you get enough req to buy a GS or Bomber, but those are so different from scouts play style it's a big jump for newer players.

 

I've played for maybe 2 months now, and scouts are what I fly most often. I have a bomber and gs on both sides, but don't feel anywhere near competitive, or survivable in them because they are still new to me and I'm still new to the game.

 

I get that it sucks to feel like you've been one shotted, in any class/ship/game. GSF, ground pvp, or otherwise, being smooshed sucks. But it happens. It's a fact of life in these types of games. The trick is to learn what happened, and try to avoid it in the future.

 

I can say that if I had the "pleasure" of starting to learn GSF in the nerf bat beaten scout class you suggest, I'd probably have not played more than two matches. Having a scout that feels like it can hold it's own is slightly important, when your only choices are scout or strike, when you don't have any ships mastered.

 

No, I'm not a game wide Ace, or even veteran on a single server yet, but having started recently, I feel like my experience contradicts your suggestions to make things more balanced. Making scouts even softer than they already feel to most new players would probably have the effect of scaring off more new players after the first few matches. Which, from what I've been hearing is pretty much the opposite of what we want to see, right?

[Storm-Cutter]

As a scout pilot I can't agree with the OP's proposals. Scouts, GS and Bombers are just about right if you make some informed choices over builds.( Strikes need a bit of a buff tho')

 

As well as the guides here in this forum, best bet is to chat with the pilots on your server and build some friendships. - It counts for a lot if you co-ordinate or at least have a plan at the start or just watch one-another's backs. - find out what makes the top-scorers so good. - After all, they must be doing something right.

 

Check out some of the recorded matches posted here, you might just find something that'll help.

 

Over all it's about choosing the right tool (Ship) for the job, sticking to your role and not trying to solo your way to the top in what is actually a team-game.

[wasteroiujhhb]

there are some people who play scouts religiously in gsf who basically 1-3 shot and kill every player on a team. it doesnt matter if its death match or domination. You tell me that's not op! these players get an average of 25-45 kills every match. you tell me that's balanced ? No i don't just play a gunship, i play all the ships. scouts are basically supposed to spot an enemy harass them and that's it.

[caederon]

there are some people who play scouts religiously in gsf who basically 1-3 shot and kill every player on a team. it doesnt matter if its death match or domination. You tell me that's not op! these players get an average of 25-45 kills every match. you tell me that's balanced ? No i don't just play a gunship, i play all the ships. scouts are basically supposed to spot an enemy harass them and that's it.

It's not op. The player flying the scout that is landing that many kills would also do so in gunship.

 

In a traditional sense, you are right. A 'scout' usually connotes something light, fast, not meant to be on the front line of combat. GSF's 'scout' class doesn't precisely fit that mold, but it's just a matter of semantics. If they called the Type 2 Scout an Interceptor, instead, or even called it a Strike Fighter, it would still perform the same... and would still have the same counters. It wouldn't be any less frustrating, because your team would still be getting lit up by one pilot who seems unstoppable.

 

Here's the thing, though: they're not unstoppable.

 

Coordinate with your team a little. Get a few of them to use Type 2 Bombers with Railgun Drone. Maybe a few of them should try scouts with Cluster Missiles and lots of Evasion. Get some Gunships in there with Ion Railgun. Focus some effort towards dealing with the pilots that are troubling you. I know it is frustrating, and not easy, but it can be done. The game gives you tools to do it.

 

- Despon

Edited February 26, 2017 by caederon

[Bolo_Yeung]

there are some people who play scouts religiously in gsf who basically 1-3 shot and kill every player on a team. it doesnt matter if its death match or domination. You tell me that's not op! these players get an average of 25-45 kills every match. you tell me that's balanced ? No i don't just play a gunship, i play all the ships. scouts are basically supposed to spot an enemy harass them and that's it.

 

If you want to prove how OP a scout is - fly in one. Record an ingame movie and show how do you own other ships.

I can do it for a gunship. Can you put something behind your statements 'scout is OP' except words?

 

Also, notice that most higher level TDMs are just a GS + bomber balls against each other with ocassional scout. And the scout pilots won't get highest score when teams are equal...

[Lavaar]

If you want to prove how OP a scout is - fly in one. Record an ingame movie and show how do you own other ships.

I can do it for a gunship. Can you put something behind your statements 'scout is OP' except words?

 

Also, notice that most higher level TDMs are just a GS + bomber balls against each other with ocassional scout. And the scout pilots won't get highest score when teams are equal...

 

Now now Bolo, it's not all about you

[Bolo_Yeung]

Now now Bolo, it's not all about you

 

I was taking precautions in case someone would tell 'you fly scouts, so you say gunshi*s are OP' Sorry for not stating it at start for those who don't understand

[Verain]

No i don't just play a gunship, i play all the ships. scouts are basically supposed to spot an enemy harass them and that's it.

 

WHY would you think that's the job of the scout?

 

Lets look at the battle scout, which is its name from the game files. Otherwise known as the Type 2 Scout, this is the Flashfire/Sting/IL-5.

 

This ship has the premier gunship blaster, the BURST LASER CANNON. This weapon is not meant to harass. It is meant to score devastating hits at close range, and fire at high arc. It is VERY GOOD at this job, and sticking it on a mobile ship (scouts have the best turning and speed) with the best engine management (scouts have the lowest boost cost) means that any ship with this is meant to run you down, chase you around a corner, and beat you to death with lasers. There's no other possible intent.

The ship ALSO has the premier strike fighter laser, the QUAD LASER CANNON. This weapon is ALSO not meant to harass. It is meant to produce very high dps at anything at short or medium range that can be lined up. And it is on the ship that is best (tied with best, technically) at lining stuff up underneath it. This is not meant to harass. This is meant to pop anything without high armor almost immediately.

Finally, the ship has the highest dps weapon in the game- light lasers. Generally not considered as good in practice as the other choices, the fact that it has these three weapons can't be read any other way except that it was intended to have a choice of amazing ways to blow up enemies.

 

For shields, this class gets the mighty DISTORTION FIELD, something all scouts get. This allows it to shrug off any missile locks that happened to land on it, gives it a pretty great way to joust or dodge railguns. It's basically the only shield that does anything useful against railguns on a scout, for that matter. It also gets quick charge shield, which seems like it was meant to be good, and directional shield, which was sorta maybe meant to be the standard for shields. Even given that distortion ends up being the better choice in most case, the dev intent is pretty clear- this ship has ALL the good shields for dogfighting, not for harassing. The type 1 scout, with its ability to shunt shield to engine, could be meant for harassing. The type 2 scout is meant to not be hit, or not take that much damage. That's why it has the good shields.

 

For engine components, this ship has EVERY possibly useful mobility. A ship meant to harass doesn't get Retro Thrusters added to its component list. That doesn't harass, it sets you up for a burst kill. It also has all the other top picks. It is meant to be able to cross vast distances OR break locks constantly OR get burst kills, depending on what the pilot wants. If it was meant to harass, it wouldn't have the set of engine components that it does.

 

Secondary weapons, the ship has access to both the highly bursty rocket pods, which strike immediately and with great devastation at anything that can be lined up. It combines perfectly with quad lasers for an amazing amount of burst damage, that can end any ship without good armor or mobility. It combines very well with burst lasers, for a good amount of damage that pierces enemy shields. The ship ALSO has access to cluster missiles, which are the highest dps of all the lockon garbage, and also the only lockon weapon capable of striking an opponent who is not just a torso.

 

Penultimately, the secondary components available are only the best ones for beating stuff up. Reactor AND Armor is all the defenses. Thruster is the best for hunting people down or dogfighting. Capacitor is a clear indication of blaster specialization. Missing: Sensors, the GSF equivalent of a National Geographic subscription, and Magazine, which is about sustaining fire of some sort.

 

Ultimately, the big deal is the weapons systems. Blaster Overcharge is unique to the battlescout. Its not the most favored component in the current meta, but it absolutely does have its place. One of its mastered builds means that this is a 40 second cooldown move that lasts for 12 seconds, and during its duration it increases firing rate by 32%, increases weapon regeneration by 15%, and increases blaster damage by 10%. Tell me how this is meant to harass. This component, unique to the ship, is just a bunch of different ways to murder your enemies.

More amusingly, the component usually selected over this one- targeting telemetry- is also a pack of damage boosting tricks, along with some destealth and sensor range stuff. Things meant to harass don't have perks that increase critical magnitude by 25% and critical chance by 10% (for pods and blasters), with a 50% uptime.

 

 

So I could believe that the type 1 scout was meant to harass. It has components that are sorta intended for that, and, in the hands of a good pilot, I've seen it do exactly that. I can also believe that the type 3 scout is intended to support, which can include some harassment, based on its components and names. But EVERY good dogfighting component landed on the type 2 scout. That's not an accident, that's intention. The battle scout is meant to tear things apart that don't flee, dodge, etc. It has the highest dps stuff in the game. If you deleted all the top dps components, it would have the SECOND highest dps stuff in the game. The devs pulled no punches designing this ship to be good at its job of beating stuff up in a knife fight.

 

 

 

If you want to talk balance, yes, ultimately, the scout burst, and sustained, could be reduced. But you would need to make a bunch of compensatory changes to the entire rest of the game to make that happen. Scouts keep gunships in check (and just barely on shipyards TDM), but are decently countered by bombers, especially bombers working together. If you weaken scouts, the meta would just be gunships and maybe a bomber here and there.

 

What you see, with the ace scouts popping foodships on spawn, is not really related to the scout. Whatever the highest dps ship is would show up in those games, as aces race against each other in a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos. If you are really seeing great pilots blowing stuff up on scouts, you need to look past the scouts.

 

Why not play the scout more? If it is so good and unstoppable, just main the damned battle scout. Plenty of pilots do so, and some aces. It's a seriously important building block of the metagame, and GSF could always use more scout pilots. Or, if you play every ship as you say, why not take our advice on stuff that counters scouts? If you have a nest set up well and you are watching a scout feast on your foodships while safety is just a barrel roll away, you'll quickly realize that you are just observing a skill discrepancy.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Verain

[Verain]

Also, notice that most higher level TDMs are just a GS + bomber balls against each other with ocassional scout. And the scout pilots won't get highest score when teams are equal...

 

It's not quite as monolithic as you say, but I do agree that in a high level match, the scouts don't get the lion's share of the kills as they do in a game versus poorly resisting opponents. That doesn't make them less important though. The team that fields all gunships, or mostly gunships and a couple bombers, will get torn apart by the team playing those 2-3 scouts, even if the scouts don't look amazing on the scoreboard in that situation. The scoreboard doesn't record how many shots were dodged by the scout pilot or evaded by his distortion, doesn't record the gunships he deroosted allowing his team to advance or allowing a DOed pilot to go to work.

 

Regardless, OP sorely lacks experience if he's super focused on the scout burst. The scout burst probably IS unfair, in the sense that an overhaul of the game would do well to lower it some. It's not unfair in the way OP is describing. A rebalance that changes distortion missile break to be something else (like lockon time), reduces scout burst (probably through normalization of the cooldowns), provides an additional defensive option against railguns besides raw miss chance to both strikes and scouts, reduces potential railgun burst by dialing down the top damage and the critical damage, and numerous buffs to strikes, would be the sort of change set that could safely include the listed scout nerfs. Just screwing them over would hurt the game immensely.

[wasteroiujhhb]

honestly the suggested changes are suggestions on what they can do to improve gsf take one or 2 of the ones i suggested not all. gunships should take a lot more damage since there slow. and improve turning rate of stationary ships since there not moving. slower ships should turn faster. scouts need to be re-balanced one way or another.

 

I did suggest putting people in a general pool to improve the wait time on gsf battles because sometime you wait for hrs trying to get into a match because when one side is dominating the other doesn't want to play anymore.

 

Who would want to play when 5 or more top aces on the server is on 1 side and giving the other 0 chance of winning repeatedly all day long. That alone kills the ambition of people wanting to play. I know when i log into a match and see 3-5 key players on the other side i see people drop group and go back into que because they know its going to be a loss.

 

Also maybe give stock only matches ( disable upgrades) to give some people the chance to actually upgrade and get their ships up to par. Maybe learn how to pay their ships better without devastating losses. Alot of us would welcome stock only matches. not only to improve wait time but to also give one side a chance to win.

 

Another change i would suggest is a range color code for target boxes.This way you know who is close and who is out of range, and you know where you are standing in a battle and not guessing. maybe a range circle for your weapons on mini map to help a bit.

 

Maybe have some matches as a scouts on scouts disabling gunships and bombers, call it a chance engagement, or recon encounter.

 

I would love to have more then 5 ships to choose from in battle. maybe have 10 more more. this way you don't get hampered with what you have selected giving some people a better choice of ships for each situation.

 

how about having limitations on types of ships per match. so some matches you are forced to play more then 1 type of ship. some one has to play the bomber, gunship, strike, scouts evenly.

 

For all u haters on dont touch my scouts, get this if they don't do something to fix them, you guys wont be playing gsf at all because people who want to play their bomber and gunships wont play anymore after getting repeatedly held over a barrel every match.

[Verain]

gunships should take a lot more damage since there slow.

 

In practice, they do. Damage in this game is almost entirely about actually landing the shots, and gunships have to hold still in space to do this. This is a big part of why a scout can pop a gunship so quickly- the gunship is holding still when this occurs, so almost every shot connects.

 

and improve turning rate of stationary ships since there not moving

 

This makes no sense. Arguably, stationary ships shouldn't be able to turn at all- in practice, the turning rate is very slow, as your ship isn't able to use its forward motion to turn. This is a fundamental part of all flight sims and arcade space sims. This isn't an fps.

 

slower ships should turn faster.

 

While a very fast ship with poor control would be interesting, that's not what we have here. Remember that the faster you go, the wider your turning radius- this is already in the game, and why in a turn fight you are holding "decelerate" to get the tighter turning radius over a ship at 75% thrust or 100% thrust.

 

scouts need to be re-balanced one way or another.

 

In the sense that the entire game does, yes. In the sense that you mean, definitely not.

 

I did suggest putting people in a general pool to improve the wait time on gsf battles because sometime you wait for hrs trying to get into a match because when one side is dominating the other doesn't want to play anymore.

 

You're simply incorrect. If one faction isn't queuing, the other faction gets wargames. If you are waiting an hour for a queue to pop, you are on a dead server, full stop. Queues never die because of one team eating everyone else (or rather, the perception that that is happening, because it happens to you three games in a row).

 

Who would want to play when 5 or more top aces on the server is on 1 side and giving the other 0 chance of winning repeatedly all day long.

 

Apparently everyone. GSF queues scale with population and game rewards, and that's about it- there's pretty much always some people who want to play GSF, after all.

 

I know when i log into a match and see 3-5 key players on the other side i see people drop group and go back into que because they know its going to be a loss.

 

I mean, you can do that. But not everyone will. Most GSF games are sorta determined by the matchmaker, as far as who will win, and with a bit more experience you'll see it isn't entirely about ace composition either. It's a team game, and the better team usually wins, which is what you would expect. You have plenty of agency here: you can improve your play, team up with other players who want to win, or much more likely, play a role that your team needs badly. A lot of solo queue pilots end up in a gunship or bomber, because they have too many players on their team lining up for the dogfighting role.

 

Also maybe give stock only matches ( disable upgrades) to give some people the chance to actually upgrade and get their ships up to par.

 

Why would they do this? They already built the upgrade system to be reasonably friendly, made the difference between a stock and a mastered ship trivial compared with most other places in any MMO or even pvp game with upgrades, and then vastly increased the requisition amount, both baseline and with this temporary buff. You seem to think that new players are losing because their ships suck. Go look up videos of aces in stock ships. New players are losing because THEY suck. They'll upgrade their ships long before they are anywhere close to their maximum potential as pilots too. If we're going to get alternate rulesets, I'd like to see about a zillion things before I see stock games. A better idea would be a daily quest that involves taking a specific ship that is about half mastered and playing games with it, and which ship and which daily could change day to day. That would actually be real content though, and I doubt we'll see that.

 

Alot of us would welcome stock only matches. not only to improve wait time but to also give one side a chance to win.

 

Stock matches would definitely not help you win.

 

You are laboring under a lot of confusion. You think that a lot of the game is based on stock or not stock, when that's trivial compared to pilot skill. You also think that stock ships are in any way balanced amongst themselves. You may even think stock ships are fun, when in fact they are pretty repetitive. Stock play has its fans among aces, but stock nights sort of dropped off (Ebon Hawk used to host them), and a lot of it is that stock play isn't that compelling.

 

 

Another change i would suggest is a range color code for target boxes.

This is a pretty good idea, but I'd say it should be based more on shape and intensity than color. Right now, figuring out the ranges of ships is mostly a game where you quickly mouse over the ships, along with getting a bit used to speeds and the map. It takes a lot of experience to get this information quickly out of the UI. There's a lot better way to display this information than we currently have. As you play, you'll notice that you understand ranges a lot more than when you were new, but improving the UI on this would be a nice improvement and reduce the exceptionally steep learning curve this game has.

 

Maybe have some matches as a scouts on scouts disabling gunships and bombers, call it a chance engagement, or recon encounter.

 

Different game modes would do a lot for this game. This is an issue where we don't have any devs. I've seen a bunch of really good suggestions for game modes here over the years.

 

I would love to have more then 5 ships to choose from in battle.

 

I've actually asked them this back when they were on a stream, and they basically said they had no plans for that, and seemed a little surprised by the question. I think they have no plans for it, sadly.

 

how about having limitations on types of ships per match. so some matches you are forced to play more then 1 type of ship. some one has to play the bomber, gunship, strike, scouts evenly.

 

This has been brought up before as well, but you'd need to change a lot to make it happen. If there were five match types (rules for ship selection), then you'd need to maintain five hangars- one for your strikes-only match, etc. What wouldn't be ok is saying "you can have TWO gunships, no more", because then, how do you determine who gets the gunship? In that case, you would need an even more complicated UI and matchmaking. But having different rules for game types would be fine, because it would increase the play diversity.

 

For all u haters on dont touch my scouts, get this if they don't do something to fix them, you guys wont be playing gsf at all because people who want to play their bomber and gunships wont play anymore after getting repeatedly held over a barrel every match.

 

I've seen this same argument made against bombers, gunships, and even scouts before. I've seen it made against groups of players. I've seen it made against strategies. I've seen this argument made so many times. Ultimately, players who are angry at balance, or teamwork, or whatever, don't control the queues. They'll come over and yell at you about how you're destroying the game, and you'll never get a queue, and you can't type back because you are already in a 12v12.

 

The queues are pretty much all based on population and dev rewards. When the devs start awarding whatevers from the daily ground game pvp quests and also award more whatevers from the ground game win/loss, you'll see sparser queues. If they normalize the rewards again later, you'll see more frequent queues. When story mode is delivering 12x XP, you'll see sparse queues. When the devs "pay" players to avoid GSF, you see less GSF. Good players beating bad players isn't destroying the game, or anything like that. This argument has literally been made since the first week. It's always been a garbage argument.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Verain

[Bolo_Yeung]

Laughed hard about 'gunship should do more damage'...

 

Gunship has the same lightweight armor and distortion field components that 'OP scouts' have. Mobility - only slightly less... the damage is about 1760 / 1600 + 15% chance for 2400 from 15 km range.

 

A bit of advice - instead of expecting duck shooting, pay attention to minimap and to the sounds around you. If you hear someone slowing down near you, and Targetting Telemetry / Blaster overcharge sound, IT IS TIME TO MOVE. Press Tab, to see who is it - there are few true scout 'aces' so yoiu should know the names - and boost away,try to get your pursuer into the range of friendly ships.

This is PvP . You have to learn , adapt, counter enemy tactics. Everyone wants to win, everyone should do their best to win. Not sit and shoot.

 

And again, try to learn flying scouts - it will help, the more ships you know how to fly, the more ability to help your team you have.

 

For all u haters on dont touch my scouts, get this if they don't do something to fix them, you guys wont be playing gsf at all because people who want to play their bomber and gunships wont play anymore after getting repeatedly held over a barrel every match.

 

Well, hater "nerf scouts, boost MY gunships because I cant kill everyone and someone DARES to shoot back " gets what he deserves.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Bolo_Yeung

[caederon]

For all u haters on dont touch my scouts, get this if they don't do something to fix them, you guys wont be playing gsf at all because people who want to play their bomber and gunships wont play anymore after getting repeatedly held over a barrel every match.

Please understand that your experience is not representative of what people on other servers are facing. There are alternate-dimension versions of you saying this on other servers, except instead of saying "because people who want to play their bomber and gunships wont play anymore" they are saying gunships or bombers must be nerfed "because people who want to play their scouts and strike fighters wont play anymore" otherwise.

 

You are looking at the game through a very small window. Try playing on other servers, and see how your experience differs. It will. Your balance suggestions are based on an incomplete view of the state of the game. That is not an opinion, it is shown very clearly by the arguments you're making. I don't expect you to have played everywhere, against everyone before offering an opinion, but please recognize that open-mindedness might benefit you. You might even find solutions to your scout issues if, instead of proposing a full overhaul of the game based on faulty assumptions, you ask for advice on how to solve your problem. Or, you know, take the advice already presented and see if it works!

 

- Despon

[Verain]

Oh, one more thing OP- you mentioned playing all ships. Strike Fighters are generally a lot weaker than the other ship types. They are playable and fun and well designed, but the damage you do isn't up to par with the effort you have to put in to get it. They are not assumed to be a competitive ship type. If your problems come from trying to dogfight scouts on a strike in any measure, this is kind of assumed to be a strike problem. Mostly because it has been the opinion of a lot of players in game and on the forums, and the devs have solicited advice for strike buffs (and then blown away, like leaves in the wind). Basically, don't use strikes as a metric to measure any ship type- everything looks overpowered compared to them, because they are pretty damned underpowered.

[Ornithopoda]

I would love to have more then 5 ships to choose from in battle. maybe have 10 more more. this way you don't get hampered with what you have selected giving some people a better choice of ships for each situation.

 

While having the option to put every (or almost every) ship on your bar would be fun, it is certainly not necessary. If you pick the right five ships to put on your bar, and equip the right components on them, then you already have all of the tools you will need for pretty much any situation. Half of the ships in this game are non-competitive compared to the other half, and using them over the more meta options would just be more of a determent to your team than an asset in competitive matches.

[iDahj]

So long time for lurker here. The one thing I really wish swtor's pvp had was better options when queueing for matches. If you want to do pve content through the matchmaker you can selected which map in particular that you want as well as if you want a new game or are ok with backfilling. Where are those options for pvp?

 

Furthermore if you are playing a pure pvp game say rocket league for example, look at the map / game options when setting up a match. GSF could easily have had an option for no powerups in tdm or powerups in dom as well as stock ships or only up to tier 3 upgrades. Or options to change the frequency of the powerups say low medium high. While you or I may argue about what is "good" or fun, some choice would be good imho. I imagine a small / medium / large map option for different match sizes could be implemented as well say 3-5 vs 3-5 , 8v8, and 12v12 (maybe extra large in addition). Being able to create games and invite people to them would be nice as well. Guess I will keep dreaming.

 

Yes gsf is pvp minigame within an mmo and has a "small" population and queue dilution would likely be an issue. I just believe that pvp works better with more options.

 

Namaloha,

-jams

[caederon]

Being able to create games and invite people to them would be nice as well. Guess I will keep dreaming.

 

Yes gsf is pvp minigame within an mmo and has a "small" population and queue dilution would likely be an issue. I just believe that pvp works better with more options.

I completely agree with this. I've been asking for a custom match lobby for years. The issues with allowing a granular sort of map selection with GSF in its current state are pretty much all related to population size. As long as the servers are distinct and the player pool is fractured, there aren't enough people queuing to make matches happen if too many are only interested in, for example 'no powerups TDM.' Cross-server queuing with a custom match lobby would solve a lot of problems. There are no devs actively working on GSF, though, so it is unlikely to happen.

 

- Despon