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Feedback and Suggestions / Loch changes and effect on overall gameplay
« on: March 19, 2016, 10:37:09 pm »
So, I found out the loch ammo changes finally went live today. They've had a relatively interesting and overall detrimental effect on the game.
For starters, if you aren't prepared to cycle through several lobbies waiting for experienced crew members and an experienced ally without running you will die. Repeatedly, quickly, no two ways around it. This is because the loch buff has left zero margin for error. Prior to the buff when armor went down you could still generally recover, especially if you were a halfway decent pilot. Now, If your engineer cannot keep your hull up at all times, you die. If your gunner doesn't know how to deal maximum DPS with whatever arc you have, you die. This has immediately made the game very unfriendly to new players, and it's made it very unfun for vets as you can either spend 30 minutes lobby stacking (against any new players on your team) or have a 90% probability of a loss.
Secondly, it's placed a heavy emphasis on sniping matches. I hate sniping matches, always have and always will. Personal preference, yes, but I suspect locking the game into two basic strategies (snipe and pubstomp) is going to make other people unhappy as well.
Third, the changes seem to amplify any difference in crew member / ally skill level versus the other team into a match deciding factor. Typically this has come down to pilot decisions such as ship loadout and overall strategy / ally coordination. Now the matches are decided almost purely by crew member and ally skill level; to paraphrase "the only winning strategy is not to play".
Finally, it's really amplified the discrepency between the time spent playing "Lobbies of Icarus" and actually playing a match (tedious 50 minute sniping sessions where the environment decides the victor excluded). Something needs to be done to lower the lobby times. Perhaps a "AI crew" mode where all ships agree to give up two slots to AI in exchange for a balanced, faster start?
P.S. I'm also seeing a sudden spike in captain and crew ragequits since this change. Perhaps this indicates even more strongly that something is now way, way out of whack....
For starters, if you aren't prepared to cycle through several lobbies waiting for experienced crew members and an experienced ally without running you will die. Repeatedly, quickly, no two ways around it. This is because the loch buff has left zero margin for error. Prior to the buff when armor went down you could still generally recover, especially if you were a halfway decent pilot. Now, If your engineer cannot keep your hull up at all times, you die. If your gunner doesn't know how to deal maximum DPS with whatever arc you have, you die. This has immediately made the game very unfriendly to new players, and it's made it very unfun for vets as you can either spend 30 minutes lobby stacking (against any new players on your team) or have a 90% probability of a loss.
Secondly, it's placed a heavy emphasis on sniping matches. I hate sniping matches, always have and always will. Personal preference, yes, but I suspect locking the game into two basic strategies (snipe and pubstomp) is going to make other people unhappy as well.
Third, the changes seem to amplify any difference in crew member / ally skill level versus the other team into a match deciding factor. Typically this has come down to pilot decisions such as ship loadout and overall strategy / ally coordination. Now the matches are decided almost purely by crew member and ally skill level; to paraphrase "the only winning strategy is not to play".
Finally, it's really amplified the discrepency between the time spent playing "Lobbies of Icarus" and actually playing a match (tedious 50 minute sniping sessions where the environment decides the victor excluded). Something needs to be done to lower the lobby times. Perhaps a "AI crew" mode where all ships agree to give up two slots to AI in exchange for a balanced, faster start?
P.S. I'm also seeing a sudden spike in captain and crew ragequits since this change. Perhaps this indicates even more strongly that something is now way, way out of whack....
