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Why DU's PVP isn't as fun as pre-shields.


N19Ultimate

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Some will disagree with me and claim that DU's PVP was never fun but I strongly disagree, I had loads of fun before shields came out. This is due to how PVP brings players together.

 

Before Shields every group in the game ran multicrew ships they would have 1 pilot, 4 gunners and 2 repair guys, now this would bring people together, it was so so soooo much more fun communicating with your org mates while you all organised your firing and piloting and made sure your ship was all repaired, unlike now when you have one person on one ship running the entire ship. It no longer has that feel of comradery, it no longer has the same team aspect to it. you no longer feel as though you are an elite unit in a space ship fighting your enemy. 

 

Now I can keep going on about how bad this update was for the PVP meta and population but instead I will list some changes that I believe NQ should make to bring back the fun aspect of DU's multicrew and add counters causing fleets to create fleet comps and not just run the same type of ship. In the following wall of text I am going to address the majority of aspects of PVP and explain how the y are unbalanced and how to make them balanced and fun.

 

Firstly Tanking.

I will start this of by comparing the in-balance between shield and voxel tanking.

 

When your voxel gets shot you lose money, as that is voxel you then have to replace afterwards. When your shield gets hit you investment in your shield becomes worthwhile as you can just leave your ship on your pad for 10mins and it will regen. When you are in a fight with voxel you only have a limited amount of HP that's based on your total elements and voxel. when you are in a fight with your shield you are carrying infinite HP as you can leave the fight to go and vent and regen your health as much as you want. when you shoot a shield you have no real feedback/sense of accomplishment but when you shoot a voxel based ship you can see every dent and every bullet hole and every explosion and feel that accomplishment.

 

How to balance this?

 

Set L, M and S shields to 15mil HP, leave L shields to how there are so that they still protect the entirety of the ship, make M shields only protect about half the ship and S only protect a specific direction. Now if Voxel was balanced correctly S and M shields would have a interesting part in 1v1's and small fleet fights whereas L will most likely still be used for medium to Large fleets due to the chaotic aspect.

 

Remove the CCS Health Pool curve making more voxel less worth while, this meant that you were putting an artificial limit on ship size and not letting builders be creative, CCS will still play a role because it means you cant just build a giant ship and expect to live forever as hitting it too many times wont expose the core but will hit the CCS limit. It will also make small ship viable as they would most likely be trying to not die from the CCS Health Pool but instead will most likely die from their core unit being hit, and Medium sized ships will most likely die 50% of the time to CCS and the other 50% of the time to their core being hit.

 

Increase the CCS value that each voxel supplies by 2.5 times what they currently do. ships will die way too quickly otherwise.

 

Now those are the changes I would like to see made to Tanking. This isn't directly involved in Tanking but Tanking Usually has a negative affect because of this so I feel that I should mention it here in this section. NQ have openly stated that they don't like the length of fights and believe them to be too long. Now they usually nerf how your ship takes damage to try and fix this when I don't think this is the answer. When we build warship we have a goal in mind, it may be to be the last on field or to have a mission runner last long enough for a response to arrive or an armoured hauler to escape a fleet of ship after mining an asteroid. These are all goals that we build ships for, if you don't like the length of fights then you need to change the win condition as this will then make us rethink how we build ships and could shorten fights if implemented correctly.

 

Weapons.

I feel as though weapons could be used to add counter play to the game which could then interduce a fleet comp and add another level of depth to fights.

 

First Off make each guns firing feel different. I would like to see railguns do small long holes in voxels while missiles do fat big explosions. Lasers drawing lines across the voxel as though the ship had battle scars, and leave cannons how they are as they will now feel unique.

 

Secondly, Make M guns an anti-Shield weapon, Either give them the ability to pass damage through shields doing 50% to the shield and 50% to the ship, ignore  shield resistances or do double or even triple damage to shields. This will mean shields are not he be all and end all and will force people to hybrid tank.

 

Lastly Make S guns a weapon that can slow down targets. If S guns could nerf the ships engine speed by 2% for every hit a well piloted S core that gets behind a big L core could be a real pain in the ass and viable in large fleet.

 

And there you have it, you now have counter play and can create a fleet composition.

 

Conclusion.

 

If these changes are made I believe that we would have a more fun and balanced PVP experience in DU. What do you think?

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PvP needs a long way to go, but you are wrong. the old way was terrible.  Absolutely the worst pvp i ever played in any game.  At least right now ships actually died.  And if beta launched with pvp how it is right now, we woulda been way better off, and retained way more people.  And now with speed changes coming soon to help Smaller cores get into range to use their weapons, the game has a chance to keep progressing to be better.  

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1 hour ago, N19Ultimate said:

Remove the CCS Health Pool curve making more voxel less worth while, this meant that you were putting an artificial limit on ship size and not letting builders be creative, CCS will still play a role because it means you cant just build a giant ship and expect to live forever as hitting it too many times wont expose the core but will hit the CCS limit.

Have you done any calculations on this topic?
Currently if you are using tier 5 alloy, they have more than x5 multiplier on CCS per HP, you would need at least 120mil of voxels HP to even have a chance to hit your CCS limit and not die by the core explosion. That is around 30,000m^3 of voxels. How is that limiting your creativeness?

 

1 hour ago, N19Ultimate said:

Remove the CCS Health Pool curve

 

1 hour ago, N19Ultimate said:

Increase the CCS value that each voxel supplies by 2.5 times

Elements HP are negligible compared to voxels if you have at least 20-30 mils of HP, and with current curve and multipliers you will have much more CCS than that HP amount, so I don't really get your point here, why would you want to increase your CCS if it's hardly noticable before 120-150+ mil of HP, and that's what it's main reason, to make invicible ships not possible to make.

 

 

1 hour ago, N19Ultimate said:

add counter play to the game which could then interduce a fleet comp

There are already counterplays and fleet compositions, if you don't see a counter to your ship, that doesn't mean that there is none.
If you have low cross-section L laser ship, it will die to low cross-section M rail ship.
If you have low cross-section M rail ship, it will die to 50mil+ CCS L laser/Cannon ship.
3Lasers+2Missiles+M radar are viable too (will have 4 types of damage and very hight DPS, but not very long range),
And there is more, that's just an on-surface example.

 

 

1 hour ago, N19Ultimate said:

Secondly, Make M guns an anti-Shield weapon

 

1 hour ago, N19Ultimate said:

Lastly Make S guns a weapon that can slow down targets

Weapon percs depending only on size? I strongly agains this. Addition of other percs in current `heavy`, `precision` etc.. I'm ok with.

 

 

1 hour ago, N19Ultimate said:

give them the ability to pass damage through shields doing 50% to the shield and 50% to the ship

This is a good one, but not based on weapon type, or size.
Just make it 80% shield, 20% to ship, this will return the mid-fight repairing gameplay

Edited by W1zard
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16 minutes ago, W1zard said:

Have you done any calculations on this topic?
Currently if you are using tier 5 alloy, they have more than x5 multiplier on CCS per HP, you would need at least 120mil of voxels HP to even have a chance to hit your CCS limit and not die by the core explosion. That is around 30,000m^3 of voxels. How is that limiting your creativeness?

 

 

Elements HP are negligible compared to voxels if you have at least 20-30 mils of HP, and with current curve and multipliers you will have much more CCS than that HP amount, so I don't really get your point here, why would you want to increase your CCS if it's hardly noticable before 120-150+ mil of HP, and that's what it's main reason, to make invicible ships not possible to make.

 

 

There are already counterplays and fleet compositions, if you don't see a counter to your ship, that doesn't mean that there is none.
If you have low cross-section L laser ship, it will die to low cross-section M rail ship.
If you have low cross-section M rail ship, it will die to 50mil+ CCS L laser/Cannon ship.
3Lasers+2Missiles+M radar are viable too (will have 4 types of damage and very hight DPS, but not very long range),
And there is more, that's just a on-surface example.
If you don't like to experiment or do calculations, that doesn't mean the balance is off.

 

 

 

Weapon percs depending only on size? I strongly agains this. Addition of other percs in current `heavy`, `precision` etc.. I'm ok with.

 

 

This is a good one, but not based on weapon type, or size.
Just make it 80% shield, 20% to ship, this will return the mid-fight repairing gameplay

 

You make a lot of good points, but my main contention is this. We know speed changes are coming.  We need to see how those changes work before altering other things. The reason ships die really quickly is you can hit so far.  If S and M weapons become a main then you have to actually get in range, and also no longer need to get out of the full 2su radar range to mitigate damage. If my S core goes 10k top speed faster than your L. Plus a low cross section I know have an ability to get into close range, or exit range. This alone will spice up the gsmeplay and make piloting and choice of core more important, then after sufficient time and feedback we can work on balancing HP of shields, CCS, and stuff like that cause a lot of those are number tweaks.

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I would like to see repairman a critical role again also. Maybe an idea would be a shield HP nerf (50%?). Then add a very sharp voxel resist increase rather than raw HP.
 

Finally if an element pops the explosion causes a large CCS penalty that causes a heavy knock on the remaining CCS. Additionally you could make the explosion cause local voxel damage. Some elements could cause bigger explosions than others meaning strategic placements.  
 

Problem with idea: Element burying would need to be tackled. 

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3 minutes ago, Physics said:

I would like to see repairman a critical role again also.

 

It really wasnt that great. You pointed at something and left click.  It was monkey brain dead activity.  Second, we must not forget, a big reason for these changes were to help the server.  Gun cycles were increased for that reason, and shields were added too.  Server literally shit itself when you have to download the damage.  I really don envision any scenario where the old style of pvp comes back.  And to that I say good riddance.  Flying your ship is way more fun, and having speed differences alone will add fleet comps and variation.  We need to thoroughly test those new changes first so we can give accurate feedback and go from there. 

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4 minutes ago, VandelayIndustries said:

 

It really wasnt that great. You pointed at something and left click.  It was monkey brain dead activity.  Second, we must not forget, a big reason for these changes were to help the server.  Gun cycles were increased for that reason, and shields were added too.  Server literally shit itself when you have to download the damage.  I really don envision any scenario where the old style of pvp comes back.  And to that I say good riddance.  Flying your ship is way more fun, and having speed differences alone will add fleet comps and variation.  We need to thoroughly test those new changes first so we can give accurate feedback and go from there. 

Each to their own. I really enjoyed being the repair man as much as being the pilot. Also I get the reasons why shields are so strong currently and I doubt it’s just to do with the deformation calculations. Let’s hope NQ can rectify the underlining issues.

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7 minutes ago, Physics said:

Each to their own. I really enjoyed being the repair man as much as being the pilot.

 

For sure, im sure there is a small percentage that enjoyed it.  And the "healer" role in mmo and games can be popular.  But balancing it out in the way NQ has done their pvp seems like an impossible task, and when you couple that with the amount of server problems it caused (this is well documented and was even coined 'download your damage') I dont believe it should be returned.  Like, if you have 1 repair guy and 1 gunner shooting you, should he be able to repair all that incoming damage? or a good % of it? and if so that seems pretty OP that 1 repairman can negate my gunner seats barrage of MISSLES doing huge explosions.  And if he cant...then it defeats the purpose.  And multi crew while sometimes sounds good on paper, often leads to more imbalance with people being out numbered.   In the current fleet of single person ships (or occasionally 1 gunner) you have more ships on grid, and couple that with some speed variations (and eventually other cool mechanics) you can have a better experience flying your ship around, managing ranges, dps, resists etc.  We all know pvp has probably many years of constantly development, but I stand by its better to release their speed changes first, and get adequate testing and feedback and go from there.  Those speed changes alone will shake up the meta, and possibly put more people in S cores, which is vital to the progression of pvp in this game.  

 

EDIT - and keep in mind in the current meta the reason it seems ships die so easily is L cores can shoot the whole 2su and apply damage.  AND they are also the fastest to keep in that 2 su range.  If i show up on grid in a low cross section S core and 10 L core ships start shooting me, I can take some damge sure, but have time to turn around or pick and angle and out run them.  If more people are using S and M cores even being on radar does not now guarantee you can hit your target, giving you another mechanic to mitigate that dps, not just face tank it, but pull out of someones range if you are taking too much dmg and think you might die.  And in between all that chaos is where the fun and gameplay will lie, piloting your ship, coordinating attacks, etc.  

Edited by VandelayIndustries
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3 hours ago, N19Ultimate said:

 

 

Lastly Make S guns a weapon that can slow down targets. If S guns could nerf the ships engine speed by 2% for every hit a well piloted S core that gets behind a big L core could be a real pain in the ass and viable in large fleet.

 

 

 

I agree but not on the mechanic. let guns be guns.  Everyone knows even the XS guns even if you are in range are trash.  I think this would be a great opportunity for the first implementation of a new pvp element.  Make it only usable on a xs core.  Give it a small but ok range. 50km(?)  and give it a cool down.  3min(?) and if you hit your target ship it shuts your engines off and turns your breaks on for 30seconds to 1min (skill dependent).  My only concern is if that would be hard to accomplish coding wise, without sacrificing server performance.   S cores would be a near perfect counter to shooting these XS cores as they can apply their damage and kill them relatively quickly.  So it still needs a rounded out fleet. 

Edited by VandelayIndustries
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Heh EMP kamikaze not bad. Just hard to understand from a lore perspective why it couldn't be mounted on a big ship but the idea is kind of cool. (unless you require it to touch the target, but that seems like an unreasonable difficulty)


Slowdown on hit is also a bit unrealistic, but from a gameplay perspective pretty cool, a little nitpick: how about a hit slows down 2%, but a shot slows down the attacker by about 0,1 to 0,2%, you could miss 9 to 19 shots and still find yourself in a comparable situation if you get that one hit, to try again for another cycle so to say.

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The priority is to remove the cross section from the calculation of chances to hit in PvP.
 

We are on a build game, for mercy NQ lets us build things with a cool design.
 

The voxel + CCS nerf is enough to kill (or inflict heavy quantum damage) any ship.

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1 hour ago, Knight-Sevy said:

The priority is to remove the cross section from the calculation of chances to hit in PvP.
 

We are on a build game, for mercy NQ lets us build things with a cool design.
 

The voxel + CCS nerf is enough to kill (or inflict heavy quantum damage) any ship.

 

This.

 

Builders have quit the game who built amazing ships because we are driven to tiny cross sections to take part in PvP.

 

Anyway.

 

I enjoy DU PvP occasionally it is very expensive because there is no firm goal yet ( roll on roadmap for TW) but equally I get the lean towards the past.

 

The advantage of needing voxels and losing them means ore is used and thus industry is needed.

 

Anyway Shield levels are fine because Shields strip very fast as NQ increased weapon damages drastically from patch to patch.

 

Still some good thoughts there N19 and welcome back to the game.

 

Honvik

Premier of the Empire Org

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I think we reached a new level of ship's ugliness in pvp if this is the new meta I refuse to fly any of these I prefer to be wrecked in my old-style ships designs.
And I agree with OP on all points except that making one weapon class have a shield pen, all shields should let pass 20% of dmg as shield bleed-thru.

unb.jpg

 

And these Engines should be 100% obstructed where the logic in this, are we now in Looney Toons? 

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you will not manage to add PvP in DualUniverse, which many may wish or imagine.
Some dreams remind me more of games where you have several ready ships and only have to choose the equipment to then fly off and fight accordingly with a group or automatic firing systems then against other players. There will be no direct damage in DualUniverse. You will certainly never aim a weapon directly at another ship, target it and shoot it down following the movement and setting it in front. All we have here is a simple target click and button press fight. 

Dreams: 

EVE-Online-Weltraumschlacht-mit-riesen-Schaden-1391021103-0-0.jpg.3148f508058d8f6c5db68151a616bc58.jpg


Reality:

here miss a standard ui picture from gunnersitz control...

Edited by Zarcata
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1 hour ago, Walter said:

I think we reached a new level of ship's ugliness in pvp if this is the new meta I refuse to fly any of these I prefer to be wrecked in my old-style ships designs.
And I agree with OP on all points except that making one weapon class have a shield pen, all shields should let pass 20% of dmg as shield bleed-thru.

unb.jpg

 

And these Engines should be 100% obstructed where the logic in this, are we now in Looney Toons? 

When I look at that and remember the ships before the changes ?

 

73B3FE9A-D03A-4688-9DE3-4227A1035814.thumb.png.8c956a0f66c85ab6d528bb63e6259260.png

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3 hours ago, Physics said:

When I look at that and remember the ships before the changes ?

 

73B3FE9A-D03A-4688-9DE3-4227A1035814.thumb.png.8c956a0f66c85ab6d528bb63e6259260.png

 

And then you remember how terrible the pvp was. I'd 100% rather have ugly ships over this, because looking "good" is subjective and provides zero value.  Yes let's go back to the time when only L core was viable and 13 ships would engage each other for 1 hour and no one dies and everyone flies back into the safe zone. Absolutely trash game and pvp it use to be. That's why it was changed.

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And keep in mind the old pvp builders weren't good at all. All they did is use as much gold/silver etc and then as many elements and engines as they needed to get a desired thrust.  It took ZERO skill to build old style pvp ships. All they did after was like what was posted, form the voxels into a skull....oh wow!! Such skill...lol.  it's good those people left as they provided no value to the game.

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49 minutes ago, VandelayIndustries said:

And keep in mind the old pvp builders weren't good at all. All they did is use as much gold/silver etc and then as many elements and engines as they needed to get a desired thrust.  It took ZERO skill to build old style pvp ships. All they did after was like what was posted, form the voxels into a skull....oh wow!! Such skill...lol.  it's good those people left as they provided no value to the game.


Stop shooting down your own credibility.

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On 1/8/2022 at 5:08 PM, VandelayIndustries said:

PvP needs a long way to go, but you are wrong. the old way was terrible.  Absolutely the worst pvp i ever played in any game.  At least right now ships actually died.  And if beta launched with pvp how it is right now, we woulda been way better off, and retained way more people.  And now with speed changes coming soon to help Smaller cores get into range to use their weapons, the game has a chance to keep progressing to be better.  

Any more info about these speed changes? I hadn't heard of this

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10 hours ago, VandelayIndustries said:

And keep in mind the old pvp builders weren't good at all. All they did is use as much gold/silver etc and then as many elements and engines as they needed to get a desired thrust.  It took ZERO skill to build old style pvp ships. All they did after was like what was posted, form the voxels into a skull....oh wow!! Such skill...lol.  it's good those people left as they provided no value to the game.

 

SNS FURY CLASS : 37 Like on Du Creator

https://du-creators.org/makers/SNS Sentinels/ship/Fury-class

 

SNS Arquitens : 30 Like on Du Creator

https://du-creators.org/makers/SNS Sentinels/ship/Arquitens

 

SNS Batallion : 31 Like on Du Creator

https://du-creators.org/makers/SNS Sentinels/ship/Batallion

 

SNS Shadow : 33 Like on Du Creator

https://du-creators.org/makers/SNS Sentinels/ship/Shadow

 

SNS Borg cube : 33 Like on Du Creator

https://du-creators.org/makers/SNS Sentinels/ship/Borg cube

 

SNS Tempest : 34 Like on Du Creator

https://du-creators.org/makers/SNS Sentinels/ship/Tempest

 

All of these ships have been used in PvP and have proven their worth. The majority are no longer usable actually with the meta.

 

Well now show us what you have done on your side.

 

Unless you've already enough made a fool of yourself.

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8 minutes ago, Knight-Sevy said:

 

SNS FURY CLASS : 37 Like on Du Creator

https://du-creators.org/makers/SNS Sentinels/ship/Fury-class

 

SNS Arquitens : 30 Like on Du Creator

https://du-creators.org/makers/SNS Sentinels/ship/Arquitens

 

SNS Batallion : 31 Like on Du Creator

https://du-creators.org/makers/SNS Sentinels/ship/Batallion

 

SNS Shadow : 33 Like on Du Creator

https://du-creators.org/makers/SNS Sentinels/ship/Shadow

 

SNS Borg cube : 33 Like on Du Creator

https://du-creators.org/makers/SNS Sentinels/ship/Borg cube

 

SNS Tempest : 34 Like on Du Creator

https://du-creators.org/makers/SNS Sentinels/ship/Tempest

 

All of these ships have been used in PvP and have proven their worth. The majority are no longer usable actually with the meta.

 

Well now show us what you have done on your side.

 

Unless you've already enough made a fool of yourself.

 

Hahaha all those pre shields are nothing.  You take the BP and see what the list of elements are and voxels, make it a cube, and you get exact same results.  That's obvious to anyone who actually pvped and you making yourself seem like you never did. 

Edited by VandelayIndustries
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1 hour ago, VandelayIndustries said:

 

Hahaha all those pre shields are nothing.  You take the BP and see what the list of elements are and voxels, make it a cube, and you get exact same results.  That's obvious to anyone who actually pvped and you making yourself seem like you never did. 


 

So where is your participation in the game on your side?
 

Nothing ?
 

Sorry for taking you seriously, you're really just a troll here.

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