When did GSF get so bad?

[Tenacity]

I loved Galactic Starfighter back when it first released into the game. I quit years ago and just came back a week or two ago, tried out a match today... my god it was horrible. I don't remember the controls being so clumsy and un-intuitive, and everyone was dying within a second of getting near a control point. The kill times are way out of hand.

 

Sure, a lot of the issues are due to me being out of practice and not really remembering how anything works, but when did we go from the old dogfighting style 15-20 second kill times to these 1-2 seconds and you're dead crap? There's no fun left to be had in this game mode.

[Ramalina]

TTK being as low as 2 seconds started happening as soon as people had mastered gunships and battlescouts, and figured out how to aim Slug Railguns and use Targeting Telemetry with Burst Laser cannons. Which would have been sometime in December 2014 in GSF early access I believe.

 

That said, if you're used to running old school battlescout or gunship a few really significant changes have happened.

 

Distortion Field, and evasion in general have been nerfed. It's still a strong defensive cooldown, but you can't just giggle at all the fools trying to shoot you anymore. Also, if you didn't read the tooltip changes, DF no longer breaks lock on missiles in flight, you must use it during the initial lock. Once the missile is off the rails it's too late.

 

Everything that's not a battlescout or gunship got buffed up to about where battlescouts and gunships landed after the DF nerf. So basically everything other than some bombers is now a threat. More components are now threats too. Missiles and torpedoes actually work now, so if you don't defend against them they will kill you, a lot.

 

What hasn't changed is that the biggest factor in how long a player survives is defensive flying skill. With partial upgrades on engine, shield, reactor, and thrusters most reasonable ship builds have decent to excellent survivability if you: manage power well, mind your cooldown timers, and use terrain for defensive LOS.

 

I can say with some confidence that even if you're doing some fairly stupid stuff it should still be possible to survive at least 30 seconds or so in some really intense GSF fights. I had practice with this last night. Fly smarter, and scouts and strikes are very survivable, and gunships are decent. Bombers are decent if in cover.

 

 

The days of swarms of battlescouts chasing each other in circles all match are long gone. Part of that was poor balancing of evasion relative to other defenses, but a lot of it was just that very few people had learned how to fly well at that point.

[Ttoilleekul]

Welcome back Tenacity. Full disclosure, I wasn't around pre5.5, so I can't speak with authority about that meta. However, I can see from the numerous videos I have watched of the era, that fast kills were a thing back then too. That is not something unique to the post5.5 meta.

 

If you left before 5.5 dropped then for sure there is a big learning curve to the current meta. In some ways the game has been nerfed. Too many people rely on overly powerful Proton Torpedos and "crutch" abilities like Remote Slicing or Feedback, rather than learning advanced skills. There is a reason we call it "Protorp Wars." However for a skilled pilot the mata is in ways harder than pre5.5, because you have to deal with constant missile locks, 90% of which are Protons. The difficulty is amplified if you run a nerfed Scout. You basically play this constant dance between dodging locks and taking moments to burst people. And trust me, when you have 1-2s space between locks to burst someone, you are grateful for fast kill times!

 

I think there is still a lot of fun to be had, but as Ramalina said its far less about dog fighting these days. Few people remaining can actually dog fight, and those that can are more often than not pre5.5 veterans. The skill divide is bigger than ever, and this is caused in part by people spamming Protons rather than learning advanced skills.

 

I would suggest that what's happening is you have had a baptism of fire into the current meta. Once you adapt, you should be fine. I hope you stick around.