0.5.1.0 feedback - Balance patch (experimental)

Battlescape
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Finally got a chance to play, kinda sick atm, maybe even too much for video games but getting my testing in anyways. Sorry for rampant typos in advance

inty weapons losing so much damage has shrunk their role too much imo, they can kinda take on npc corvettes because dont overcharge shields but obviously good luck against a player. Against bombers, It means you just vaguely look at the bomber’s pip and their hp slowly drops. It doesnt feel good.

The autoaim feels really bad, as it did last time. Its just feels like your weapons randomly start deflecting if you’re near the target, you dont have a consistent line of fire and your weapons just jitter around a lot. On the receiving end, Anything within the few degrees of autoaim has stopped mattering, most moves at a distance are only a few degrees of deflection on the other player’s screen after all. Anyone who says “oh its only a few degrees” is kind of showing a lack of understanding in terms of how much stuff moves. Evasion skill has taken a big hit. We’ve tried this before and it felt this bad then too dont know what to say other than this is pretty obviously not the direction to go in with inty weapons. I would suggest not even considering these autoaimed weapons for newbies, and instead considering flak/rocket/proximity detonation type weapons instead as an easier beginner weapon system, and making sure the basic fixed weapon system is easy enough to hit easy npcs with as a starting point.

higher accels and the boost ratios probably feel better but obviously because everything else changed at the same time, its not possible to evaluate in the same context we had before. I think if anything it’s the ratios of thrust under boost that have helped the movement feeling, rather than just the higher base acceleration. We did really have higher strafe thrust than mains thrust for a bit there and i think that was probably one of the bigger issues with how flight combat was feeling when trying to push other players.

Overall i feel like interceptor combat is doing really badly right now. We got fairly lucky earlier in the dev process with some good initial balance tunings, but for a few patches now it’s been drifting down the hole quite sharply, and to me this feels like one of the worse ones. This is all part of the process and this is what experimental patches are for of course but i’d like to highlight one of my older videos to try to illustrate some of what we’ve been losing due to some of the incremental changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWehgbxfA-k
Those closer fights where its possible to push into another player or npc while also kiting several others, those moments of “turn warring” when you do get close enough and then you slip back out to a range where it’s back to trading shots were really nice. The acceleration ratios/balance haven’t been in a place where it’s been as easy to do that since though.

Visual/Audio stuff:
The movement of the target damage and health numbers to the top right corner basically makes that information unusuable in moment to moment combat. Information that we expect the player to need in moment to moment combat should occupy center screen.

exploration really should just be the default hud mode for now.

the zzt sparking due to damage is a bit too much like a wasp in the ear, its way too frequent, volume needs reduced too.

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22

The fights in your video look really good.

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Perhaps it would be interesting to try a fixed distance convergence (e.g. 0.7km)? Then we would have consistent fire vectors, but the streams would come together, reducing the problems we had before of only being able to hit with one weapon.

War Thunder has a good convergence solution, allowing players to set the crossover distance of the guns. You set your own effective engagement range.

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That could be a better solution than gimbling everything

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Convergence isn’t gonna help new players all that much. We’ve received feedback from several newcomers that they could barely land a few shots in hours of playing. That’s a bit… concerning.

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Based on these descriptions, I’m assuming the weapons don’t gimbal in the general direction of the selected target, when he target is outside of the valid gimbal range? Fixing that could probably go a long way in making the gimbal less confusing. It wouldn’t make much sense for the weapons to re-center when the target leaves the firing cone. Like this.

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There games journalists out there who will take many minutes to land a single jump in the tutorial level of a 2D platformer, mind you, don’t be too alarmed. At some point i would ask what will you expect from players who play battlescape? If there are players who can’t get any kills is it fair to add a weapon that is basically a free kill? If players cant find an enemy should an enemy be teleported to them for them to destroy? Surely there’s some line before then.

You can bring a horse to water but can’t make it drink. At some point you have to decide if you want this to be the game or not because go far enough down that path and it’s going to just be people sitting stationary, letting their autoaiming weapons kill everything around them while wondering how it possibly got to that point: https://www.twitch.tv/redlir/clip/BashfulBlueMuleBCWarrior people are tired of games that get scared of hard mechanics and just default to auto-everything… you have a big empty niche to fill here, mass appeal is sometimes less appeal

I know, im a broken record, sue me. If the idea is just to make sure people can have a good experience there’s more ways than free hits and compromising the core gameplay, there’s atmosphere coming from visuals and audio, other rewards from resupply/medic roles and such, hell exploration/scouting is something battlescape has already that most other games dont even have the possibility of achieving. The key is to pull players who cant land “a few shots in hours” to those things, because they sure can’t find their way on their own.

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I think the distances involved and how quickly those will change would make changing convergence manually a chore and a frustration. If it’s a one time set up, then the change would be barely noticeable over regular fixed weapons as we had before. The only way for convergence to work is if it’s an automatic process. And even then, you’re still relying on your aim to land shots, which puts you in the same boat.

I don’t normally play inty, I use it to get to corvette, and from there to cruiser, so I don’t have as much as a depth of experience as Mattk50 or others have. That said, I’m beginning to think that gimbled weapons aren’t the way to go either. Matt’s video is more than enough evidence that one can be extremely proficient at fixed weaponry. Gimbled weapons did increase my ability to hit, but over all I was only marginally more lethal. I’m not sure how much the maneuverability changes affected my k/d ratio.

At the risk of stating the obvious, aiming is more difficult than pretty much any of the other space games out there that aren’t sims, so I wouldn’t expect players to instantly be able to 360noscope just because they have hundreds of hours in E:D, then spend a few playing IB. I would be very hesitant to cater to noobs by going all in with sweeping balance changes. Let’s not throw everything out just because just because this game can’t be mastered 15 minutes upon picking it up.

My vote is to remove gimbals, or nerf it to basically just make the weapons converge, then give noobs either something else to do other than fly intys, or give intys alternat weapons like shotguns or something. Because honestly, hitting stuff in the inty prior to the gimbles wasn’t that hard. There’s something else going on if people have trouble hitting a couple shots in hours of combat.

This… is disgusting. Let’s avoid it at all costs.

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The AI Interceptors are more dangerous now with the gimbles and maneuver changes. I don’t think we want to go back to AI being no real threat. I now have to close circle strafe AI using quick burst of boost to keep out of the target fire lane. Crossfires are deadly now. I don’t think you can kite the AI now which to me is a good thing.

During play test today, I noticed that in Override Shields mode the energy capacitor showed 7+. It used to show 1+.

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It also could be a completely different problem. I’m not a new player and even with the gimballing in place now, I sometimes can unload a whole barrage of shots onto an enemy where I’m spot on the target reticule and don’t get a single hit.

I assume it’s the latency of the network connection and the server simply disagrees with me.

“Warning: Error correction took a long time: 88.920 ms”

I get these warnings constantly in my logs, and they can go up to 100ms. Yesterday I could hit some more as these where more like in the 10 -15ms range. But most of the time I have 60 - 100 ms.

Just a thought.
DreamKeys

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I basically agree with both sides. For an experienced player the gimbals are lame to play, but IMO they are critically necessary for new players.
They should be the default choice for new players, because as it was said and observed many times, newbs usually cant aim properly to have any resemblance of success.
That however doesnt mean that medium to expert players should be forced to use them. The choice should be up to the individual player, and weapons should be balanced in such an way that newbs aren’t completly helpless.
Right now we have to get below 1km to reliably hit an enemy with the interceptor. If the static weapons offer a faster projectile speed and less spread the experienced players could just shoot them from a somewhat larger distance, therefore it would be important to dominate the enemy by correct positioning und tactics.
We could test that by having two weapon choices available in the interceptor weapons menu, static fast and accurate, or gimbaled slow and inaccurate. These two types could then be balanced by playtesting.
The result should be that gimbaled should be a crutch for newbs to the point when the learning curve at some point dictates the need to switch to static weapons to remain competitive.

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If we are going to have gimbals (which I’m not exactly against, same as Playbenni) then this:

It does sound like the weapons track when inside the gimbal arc, then re-centre when outside the gimbal arc. Have them always track towards the target, when one is selected. It would stop the weird snapping on and off effect. The gimbal arc is so small, it won’t make a difference to the actual aiming, but it would make it easier for the player to understand what is happening.

But I would certainly like the option for a harder-hitting fixed weapon, something that can be earned and switched to once the equipment gameplay is implemented.

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There is also this to consider though maybe not from the angle grimleo had in mind, AI are definitely more dangerous now. If the goal of the gimbals was to make it easier for new players to get some hits and kills surely AI being more deadly (because AI require less ‘skill’ to perform better) defeats the point?

For veterens, high-star AI was a threat before, they just didnt exist as interceptors often because the AIs would die before reaching high stars as inty, so that needed returning. thats how AIs should be made harder if thats your goal grimleo. making the ais challenging/harder is easily possible done the right way. Giving them gimbal mechanics that nullifies player evasion skill to some extent isnt harder the same way the high-star AI are in terms of adding to game depth, it’s just cheap.

There are also many other options for easy weapon systems. We do have corvettes and such which have full turret compliments, which work because of their different game role. Missiles too are already a very reliable low-skill high-reward weapon system between two inties, probably even too good. often new players dont use missiles though because they dont know about them and/or the default bind is really bad… again the problem ends up being in the teaching rather than the mechanics.

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It is becoming a bit of a mess :slight_smile: Not blaming anybody - that’s just what the state of the game is, because we’re clearly in a transition phase.

I want to re-instate a few things:

The ship upgrades system is coming, and yes, the idea is that gimbals will be the default for new players; and a better fixed convergence weapon will be available to more advanced players.

In next week’s patch we’ll probably revert to the fixed convergence weapon for the interceptor, again, just for testing. The gimbal weapon might be moved to the bomber. It’s all fiddling, until the ship upgrades are ready.

For the gimbal reset, that’s indeed how it is working. It’s just a few minutes of work to not make it reset back to the center when the target is out of the gimbal cone. I implemented the reset because sometimes it felt awkward to see your shots go on the side, when the target was in on the screen sides ( or even in your back ).

The AI will keep receive improvements. We’ll introduce different skill levels for the AI ( last patch we ran out of time to do it ). The idea is that 50% of the AIs will be easy targets to grind on, 35% will be intermediate and the rest will be elite AIs that can use advanced tactics and have more precise aiming. We also need to revisit the targetting / prioritizing system so that easy AIs don’t target veteran players ( unless there are no other targets ) or more importantly, veteran AIs don’t target new players.

So yeah, keep in mind the big picture. There are still a lot of things to do, but we’re slowly getting there.

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EC taking 88 ms is enormous and definitely a huge performance concern. It’s not even supposed to affect your framerate - on my machine it’s around 1 or 2 ms.

For aiming precision, keep in mind the gimbaled weapons have significant spread, unlike the fixed weapons. Even if you’re perfectly on the lead reticle, if the target is too far away, most shots will miss. We wanted to promite closer combat; at the moment, the ideal range is within 1 km. Anything above than 1.5 Km you’ll see the vast majority of shots miss.

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There are two fundamental problems that drive a lot of the back and forth arguments about what the inty should be.

The big one and obvious: It is the only ship out of 6 that actually allows first person aim-with-ship combat. This one we have to live with for some time, the option to “just add another” is not there for lack of resources. But that also means it has to carry the diverging interests of the whole spectrum of FPS-piloting type of players, while the Bomber can be played as a less frantic missile boat and there are 4 options for turret based piloting.

The second big issue is that on the one hand, it has the highest skill ceiling due to its nature and fragility, (and should keep it, else it would become boring and meaningless for FPS-style pilots) but on the other hand it also has to bear the burden of being the starter ship, which needs a low skill floor so people can actually get in the game and “get it” without quitting in frustration after some minutes.

I think we are asking too much from one ship. It might be worth experimenting with offering the Bomber as a starter ship instead. Learn to fly, navigate and be a good missileboat first. Maybe optional, give a choice between Bomber and Inty for first time players? Biggest challenge for Bomber is learning to switch Torps and Missiles and learning to aim for the lead reticules for lockon. And understanding why you can not really attack a station with torps unless you turn safety off. That is less of a challenge than learning all it takes to make Inty useful, imho.

Even more radical a test would be to make the cost of Inty, Bomber and Corvette identical. And have all 3 available at start. Would probably not work for balance in the long run, but would give a more diverse early game, more choice for starters.

Dunno, maybe we need a discount system for you first 10 deaths ingame or such, so you can not keep spamming vettes, but maybe still start with em as a support player.

Of course something like that would put a very steep steep transition between small ship “phase” and capital “phase”, removing any sort of progression during the small ship “phase”.

I have no golden bullet to solve these issues, but i really think we are overburdening the Interceptor in terms of responsibilities and roles it has to bear, and looking into disentangling all those requirements would be a good thing.

As for capships, logially, if the carrier is supposed to support small ships and keep them viable in attacks and in the capital “phase”, it needs to be the first/cheapest capship available. Even when it is the biggest. Ideally it would exist as a small carrier and big fat battlecarrier split personality, but again, impossible for now. Cheap and big would be best right now imho. Good bomber target but not the end of the world if your fleet loses it. Strong motivation to have destroyers to defend it and cruisers to kill it.

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I agree, but we have to strike a good balance.

We’re already in a niche market ( space sims, even if it’s a bit less niche now with Star citizen and Elite Dangerous ).

We’re already under-exposed with little marketing budget left ( therefore, most of people in that niche market won’t even know we exist ).

If in addition to this, if the game is instantly frustrating to play for a newcomer, then the game is dead, period. You’ll be playing with your elite friends and fixed weapons on an empty server with 10 people max.

It has never been our vision to make a game that cattered only to elite players. The keyword here being “only”.

We want a low learning curve with a high skill ceiling. We currently have the skill ceiling, but the learning curve is abyssmal and the game is frustrating to learn / play, for all sorts of reasons. The lack of helpers, tutorials, the HUD etc… are all things that we’re planning on improving, but the core of the game is hitting enemies; even with the best HUD / helps, if a new player cannot have fun at least killing a few targets in its first hour, then 90% of the potential players will either refund, or stop playing after an hour.

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I like the two weapon solution, and I’m glad to hear that it will be implemented. I’m totally fine with being shot dead by better skilled players that use harder-to-use weapons, but I want to be able to engage other players on my level with weapons that are not frustating to use and land some kills while doing so. Don’t force me two be a sniper when I just want to play carelessly.
In most first-person-shooters noobs can use “spray-and-pray” to get into the game and become better without immediately hitting a road block. I view the two-weapon-solution in the same light.

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I’d go further and base the whole progression not on ship hull but on upgrades, and have interceptor to destroyer hulls be available as starter ships, but with a light load-out (no torpedoes, no mines, etc).
Then players can go strait to what fits their playstyle.

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I would prefer that the any personal ship progression is permanent between matches, credits for these upgrades should be grindy. The usual credits should go into the team pool and finance the respawns. That way the match intensity would be bound to the teams resources. Players that want to use cap ships can do so all the time and elite players that prefer fighter combat could do that without accumulating endless credits that they will never use.

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