Pilot Archive
Thread: The death of all pre-rotw ships...
Incredibly stupid to put these new ships as the same cert level of existing ships.
I'd like to hear the justification for this. Sounds like a major screw up to me.
I agree with Kitten completely. The introduction of these new ships has just thrown all space pvp balance out the door.
People are gonna start to complain when they are forced to fly a Z-95 to have any hope at all in pvp. 95k mass? What were they thinking? They should have 20k mass TOPS. And that would still be enough to make a very competetive pvp ship.
A level 10 engine with 85 YPR has no place in a 600 chassis YPR Z-95. This is very unbalancing.
Kitten_Starsider wrote:After sleeping over it to calm down my anger I thought I should comment on this matter too.
The fear that the new ROTW ships would be hopelessly overpowered compared to the old ships boiled inside me from the second the Jedi Starfighter was announced. Up to now space was more or less balanced and probably the most Star Warsy aspect of the game. Even though imperials had in my eyes a very tiny edge over rebels (as you know I am rebel pilot so that might be a bit subjective) it was always fun.
However, this changes dramatically with the release of ROTW. No wait... actually the CU brought the first tidings of the threat for the pilot and shipwright community. While the CU in itself was great for the ground game in almost all aspects (I personally don't like the strict levelling system so I'd like to soften level advantage curve a bit) it also introduced some ROTW content which was not supposed to be accessable. Unfortunately... or fortunately... I don't know, some clever shipwrights managed to craft the very first heavy Z95s, Scyks and Tie Fighters. So everyone who flew in or against these beasts noticed at once that they would cause huge collateral damage to the ship balance in JTL.
Twice the maneuverability of our most maneuverable old ships (i am leaving out novice and tier 1 ships here as these did not have the mass to carry good engines which was probably the reason to increase their maneuverability that much) and nearly the same mass as our superiority ship (X-Wing) these ships obviously made all ships lighter than an X-Wing obsolete. Unfortunately, their mass allows these ships to carry heavy shields, heavy armor and heavy weapons which literally tips the balance between heavy missile ships (mainly the Tie Oppressor) and these new ultra-maneuverable ships. This results in all ships heavier than the new ships becoming obsolete as well as they cannot hit the new ships with conventional weapons (lasers) and that you will be either blown up before you get a missile lock due to the high damage output of these ships or that the shields and armor will soak enough damage to survive.This knowledge made me worry. I talked to Tomo so he could explain the huge damage the introduction of these highly overpowered ships would cause to space to the DEVs. With Tomo being pilot correspondent and thus beta tester i hoped his explanation would make the developers see that the new ships could very well turn to be the killing blow for space combat.
Yet I was not at ease as I knew another threat was lurking just behind the horizon. A threat mainly known as Jedi Starfighter. It was my fear that this ship would beat all the heavy starter ships by lengths and thus becoming the only starfighter in use. Little did I know that this ship would only be available to imperial pilots due to the restrictions of the clone relic quest. The grieveous' starfighter sounded equally nice... yet the ship data suggests a big profile which would make it easier to hit. I fear though that the Jedi Starfighter will be smaller and as maneuverable making it the single best ship in the game. The ARC170 sounds like a nice multiplayer ship... but not like a fast and maneuverable starfighter. All other new ships could be literally labelled as junk for PvP as it was obvious that these ships would not be able to challenge the maneuverability of the grieveous', jedi fighter and heavy starter ships yet remain vulnerable to their fire. Lets call these 5 ships "clone ships" as they have near identical stats just with another model and texture.
But there are way more issues than just the balance of the ship types and the different ships that are used in battles. Why am I forced to fly an unaesthetical Z95 as a rebel? Which imperial and rebel engineers had the ideas to design new ships that were inferior to old republic and clone war ships in all aspects? I honestly would like to play SWG with a 30 year old computer... can you manage that too? Why can't my A-Wing (hyper maneuverable fighter) not outturn a Z95, Scyk and ordinary Tie Fighter (both normal and heavy)? Why does no rebel or imperial engineer think about adding mass to their newest ships before they improve outdated designs that miraculously prove to be superior to new ships rendering decades of starship engineering a waste of time? Speaking of starship engineering... What do we need shipwrights for now if we can get all new ships from (mostly) ground based quests? The pilot profession /asked/ for shipwrights to be more useful out of sympathy and our interdependence... Why cut that bound even more? Why can 30 year old extra mass defy the laws of physics (inertia)?
The time of the Galactic Civil War, the war between the empire and the rebellion, is the single main Star Wars experience. The new movies (Episode I - III) would not be as successful without the desperate fight of the rebellion which is the center of the SWG storyline.
Unfortunately for Lucas Arts these new movies play before the old ones. But to lure the people in the cinema you need to offer them something new... something they haven't seen before... something that is better than what they have seen. Alas, this is also the reason why we are getting flooded with "features" that make no logical sense (both timeline and balance). This is why polearm sabers are superior to two handed lightsabers (it looks more martial arts like... which is "in"... thus a feature for the youth). This is why Jedis have to roam the entire galaxy after they were all (but 1) killed (people see jedis in the new mvoies and want to be one too). This is why we customers are forced to buy an expansion with new "antique" ships just to stay competative. Money.Making a balanced system would be so easy. You just need to introduce a quotient like mass/(maneuverability*weapon slots*(ordnance slots+1) = tier [1-5] quotient.
The tier quotients would not be terribly different from one another but still make higher tier ships slightly better. All ships would then be useful. Players who do not want to be "uber" like choices.Kitten
/rant off
QFE
Great post Kitten...I feel your pain. I have been taking a break the last few weeks from space in general as well as the weekly PvP events to concentrate on the ground game etc. I was hoping to jump back in with enthusiasm with the release or ROTW. But now I see I am wrong. I agree with all your points and when those are added to the high number of bugs I am reading about, I have no desire to run out and start playing ROTW. Yes I want an Advanced X-wing and Jedi Starfighter but not at the expense of further alienating shipwrights and making pre-ROTW ships obsolete. The amount and type of bugs I am reading about just pisses me off as much as the CU has. At this point I am seriously thinking about ingnoring space for a while if not permenantly. I want to concentrate on becoming a padawn as I think thats all that interests me now after all these changes. If that looses my interest or proves to be 2 time consuming I will not be playing this game much anymore, there are just to many things that have changed for the worse in my oppinion. I really hope the devs realize thier mistakes here and attempt to fix at least some of them.
......
They've got three months to sort out all these messes. All of them. And get the game back on track both in space and on the ground, combat and crafting - the works. There are things about the CU I like, the GCW is overall good but needs a helluva lotta more fleshing out, but heavily pathed quests, quest dependant loot, unbalanced space combat designs (everything in designing a ship should be a matter of tradeoffs - not one simple route to optimum power like we're seeing now) and so on...I don't think this game is the SWG I came for anymore at all. And nobody can say I didn't give her a fair shake.
Perhaps they want to thin the herd a bit? Get rid of folks who really care about simming, roleplaying or Star Wars so they can have a simplified, dumbed down, Disney style theme-adventure game with some paint-ball tossed in?
OddjobXL wrote:They've got three months to sort out all these messes. All of them. And get the game back on track both in space and on the ground, combat and crafting - the works. There are things about the CU I like, the GCW is overall good but needs a helluva lotta more fleshing out, but heavily pathed quests, quest dependant loot, unbalanced space combat designs (everything in designing a ship should be a matter of tradeoffs - not one simple route to optimum power like we're seeing now) and so on...I don't think this game is the SWG I came for anymore at all. And nobody can say I didn't give her a fair shake.
Perhaps they want to thin the herd a bit? Get rid of folks who really care about simming, roleplaying or Star Wars so they can have a simplified, dumbed down, Disney style theme-adventure game with some paint-ball tossed in?
I try to be open minded and understand what the devs are thinking but I just don't get it. Whomever's running the show currently doesn't seem to want the business of the folks who initially came here looking for the things a guy named Raph Koster was talking about back when this whole roadshow started.
QFE
.....
- We had a 0 Jedi population, the servers were full, everyone was having a blast, there were bugs, we were in the post EP 4 Galaxy.
- We had a few people wondering how to get the vaunted Jedi, turned out to be stupid, the hologrind ensues, very few are actually having fun, there are still bugs, we were in the post EP 4 Galaxy, kinda.
- Jedi start popping up, not that many, still breaking cannon, but there are several thousand on the brink of unlock, very few are actually having fun, there are still bugs, we were in the post EP 4 Galaxy, less so than ever. Space Expansion, we are in EP4 in space, and beyond (with the ships that were post EP6 even)
- Jedi System changs, grinding becomes daily activity for nearly everyone, thousands of Jedi appear, very few are actually having fun, there are still bugs, we are no longer in the post EP 4 Galaxy, we are in an EP 2 timeframe, Jedi are prolific.
- CU comes around, effectivly beginning the cull of Jedi (hmm, think that would make a good movie? culling of jedi, lots of people in boba fett looking armour killing jedi...oh, wait...), very few are actually having fun, there are more bugsthan ever, we are no longer in the post EP 4 Galaxy, we are in an EP 2 timeframe, Jedi are prolific but dying a lot.
- RotW shows up, everything we had is now crap, loot is king because crafting and vendors is way to hard for kiddies to figure out, "antique" starfighters are the best stuff out there, everyone wants one and is trying to get it, and space turns into EP 3, ground turns into EP 3 with magic and cartoony effects.
Face it, they don't want you to play what they originally created, they want us playing EP <insert current movie here>. They have jumped us all over the timeline so much that this should really surprise no one.
DarthKaelan wrote:
Where did this quest start out from?
the Myydril caverns, they are located in the northwest part of the dead forest (or was it dead wood it was called?) on Kashyyk.
basically, take a left at the start of the dungeoun and work your way down in a team.
You will most likely need at least a few good teammates for this one since the stuff you will be fighting is CL 75-82.
a droid at the end of the dungeon can give out the quest...
and yes! they made a silly über ship a groundcombat questreward!!!!
I had a lot of the very same thoughts in beta when I saw the new ship stats popping up, and as soon as I learned the Jedi Starfighter was faction-specific, I made a couple posts about balance and player expectations. It was really frustrating having to sit on that info knowing the kinds of problems it would bring up.
I don't know whether it's possible to bring these new ships' stats back in line to be more balanced with the older models, but I do know I'm not going to rest until the Jedi Starfighter, Grievous Fighter, and ARC-170 are available to everyone. If we're looking at composite in space, the very least that can be done is to make sure everyone can wear it.
TomoRainer wrote:
/applaud Kitten
I had a lot of the very same thoughts in beta when I saw the new ship stats popping up, and as soon as I learned the Jedi Starfighter was faction-specific, I made a couple posts about balance and player expectations. It was really frustrating having to sit on that info knowing the kinds of problems it would bring up.
I don't know whether it's possible to bring these new ships' stats back in line to be more balanced with the older models, but I do know I'm not going to rest until the Jedi Starfighter, Grievous Fighter, and ARC-170 are available to everyone. If we're looking at composite in space, the very least that can be done is to make sure everyone can wear it.
/applaud you for pushing for that
the main ship i want is the jedi starfighter, and being imperial thats not a problem for me, however i do believe there should be alternate quests for rebels/neutrals to get the same ship...even if they made them different colors or something(assuming they are not paintable)
TomoRainer wrote:
I'm not going to rest until the Jedi Starfighter, Grievous Fighter, and ARC-170 are available to everyone. If we're looking at composite in space, the very least that can be done is to make sure everyone can wear it.
Man, Tomo. If it comes to that, it does, but please stand firm on having them fix it. This is hurtful that they have done this.
If they could nerf, outta wack, BE pets they could fix this. Hopefully before it gets to the "composite clone era" and requires a Space Combat Revamp.
In light of that, for those of you who think some of the new ships are unbalanced, what would you do to change them? Is there anyone who thinks they're underpowered, or just right? If so, how do you see them fitting in with the preexisting ships?