Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Subtle PvP changes will reduce ganking
DJXeon
Member UncommonPosts: 553
Quotes from recent devlogs
"Right now, kills up to 15 ship levels below you (and any above your ship level) count for the bounty. This means you could be sinking players far below your level, or opponents in much cheaper ships, leading to an exploitive situation. In 1.23, you won’t get credit if you sink an opposing player more than 5 ship levels below you."
Also FLS are looking at changing the way dismantling shot works in the next months patch.
These changes are aimed at reducing the harsh spike damage on Star and Chain Shot, while retaining the utility of Bar Shot at longer ranges.
With these the kind of changes ganking should be further reduced however the aim may be not to eliminate it.
You don't need to look far to find flaws with Potbs design but the game is still strangely like-able warts included.
It worries me that if FLS fixed it for all their critics there might be nothing left?
please discuss.
Comments
This is a stupid change. I always sailed lower ships by preference (MC Raa being a big favorite) to take out all comers, up to and including Valiants. The low level ships are quite viable in PVP when manned by a 50. And during my free month, I saw gank packs sailing around out there in all Mastercraft Hermes packet boats... those are what, level 24? So people apparantly still like using the small ships. Due to superior speed and manoeuvrability, these are QUITE capable of taking out small groups of level 50 frigates. But if these frigates DO manage to successfully sink one, they'll get no bounty? And if I recall correctly, these low level ships will already yield fewer MOV because of their levels.
This change does nothing for the diversity of ship combat
This change only EMPOWERS the gankers, since you still get bounty for players in HIGHER level ships than you
All I can say is that this is yet another classic /facepalm moment. I sympathise by what they're trying to achieve, but it's not going to work. They should just have used Garbad's suggestion from over a year ago, where weight is assigned to the combination of player level and cargo level, making anything under a specific boundary unattackable. In his system a level 50 would simply not be able to attack a level 25 without cargo.
Linna
FLS Deglor explained:
"To clarify, there are two factors at work here. Player level determines which version of the PVP Bounty mission you get. There are 6 versions, one at level 5, one at level 15, one at level 25, one at level 35, one at level 45, and one at level 50.
The SHIP level must be greater than or equal to the MISSION level minus 5. This mechanic is built into the mission to not encourage ganking.
The PLAYER level must be greater than or equal to YOUR level minus 15. This mechanic is built into the game, and a kill that does not meet this requirement gives you no XP or Bounty progress anywhere.
Finding the right wording for that is a bit tricky."
Also I think the nerfing in spike damage will help a lot to make PVP more enjoyable
In other words, if you're in a small ship like a Hermes MC, you can take a level 50 bounty mission and gank level 45-50 ships at will. And if you're in a level 50 frigate, you will get nothing if you actually manage to kill one of the small-ship gankers. Unless you can still take the lower level bounty missions at 50, but in that case 50s in 'failboats' will still be rewarded for ganking anything level 35 and higher.
As for nerfing the spike damage... I am not sure about that, especially if it affects PVE as well as PVP. PVE was never very fast in POTBS - a reason for much complaint in the past - and it seemed to have slowed down from what we had at launch. Not something I consider to be a positive. Boring PVE is boring. In PVP, I never considered spike damage to be a problem, so I'm not really sure why they are changing it.
Linna
In PvE its not a problem.
For PvP they are changing it to reduce the demasting effect that lvl50 players will have with small speed failboat spiking.
In PvE its not a problem.
For PvP they are changing it to reduce the demasting effect that lvl50 players will have with small speed failboat spiking.
I'm rather doubting the effect will be all that great, it's not like this hasn't been tried (several times) before. The standard tactics of the failboat groups is to go after a target with multiple ships, and multiple ships with lowered damage is still lots of damage combined. Smaller ships are still harder to hit, and bar shot will remain effective. About all I see it do is make life harder for solo raiders. Which would not appear to be the main problem group to begin with.
Linna