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Messages - Urz

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1
Community Events / Re: Sunday Community Skirmish #228 (18th November)
« on: November 18, 2018, 05:36:11 pm »
Sunday Community Skirmish #228 (11/18/2018) VODs

Commentary by Urz

The Pomelos vs Legio Lepidoptera Leviathan (Best of 5)

3
Community Events / Re: Sunday Community Skirmish #225 (28th October)
« on: October 28, 2018, 06:30:39 pm »
Sunday Community Skirmish #225 (10/28/2018) VODs

Commentary by Urz

Legio Lepidoptera Leviathan vs The Pomelos (Best of 5)

5
Community Events / Re: Sunday Community Skirmish #221 (30th September)
« on: September 30, 2018, 05:25:47 pm »
Sunday Community Skirmish #221 (09/30/2018) VODs

Commentary by Urz

Legio Lepidoptera Leviathan vs Fancy Cloud Dancers (Best of 5)

9
Community Events / Re: Sunday Community Skirmish #215 (12th August)
« on: August 12, 2018, 06:29:55 pm »
Sunday Community Skirmish #215 (08/12/2018) VODs

Commentary by Urz

An Ambitious Crossover vs The Pomelos (Best of 5)

10
Community Events / Re: Sunday Community Skirmish #212 (22nd July)
« on: July 22, 2018, 08:40:51 pm »
Sunday Community Skirmish #212 (07/22/2018) VODs

Commentary by Urz

The Pomelos vs Legio Lepidoptera Leviathan (Best of 5)

13
Gameplay / Re: PvP 2v2 with Special Abilities
« on: July 08, 2018, 01:02:23 am »
... Isn't that what happens already? Different strategies obviously, but as far as I know, ANY competitive game will have X builds at high competitive. There WILL be builds/ships that are 100% ignored because they're useless in the meta. I don't play the high competitive stuff, but if they really see more than half the ships actively flown in most competitive matches (mind I'm saying most, because there is always the odd-balls that take something not full-meta but are good enough to make it effective), I'd be shocked.

You're correct in that there is always an outside bound (X) of how many different builds or strategies can be competitively viable at any given point. The idea, though, is to try and make X a higher number rather than a lower one. Diversity in play is a key indicator of a healthy competitive metagame.

One can look at past game modes that have negatively impacted play diversity as examples:

Skyball was a mode where speed is the only thing that matters. As a result, playing anything other than the fastest ship in the game (Squid at the time) was simply a disadvantage. Perhaps the most disliked game mode of all time. It was eventually broken in an update and removed.

Resource Race heavily emphasized map mobility, requiring teams to move around the map very quickly to obtain points. While not quite as stifling to ship selection as Skyball, you were limited to ships with strong long-distance charging speed and forward facing weapons (mainly Pyramidion and Goldfish, or Squid for non-combat strategy). Resource Race was also heavily disliked and eventually removed from the game.

(Crazy King is similar to Resource Race, but one step farther away from Skyball on the "bad scale".)

King of the Hill approaches the level of "modes that can be fun to play", but the forced close-range nature excludes otherwise viable builds due to every team composition requiring the capability to both contest and defend a single area of the map.


Stock deathmatch has always been the most balanced mode in the game. Pre-Alliance you had four to five viable ships at the competitive level (2014 tier list, 2016 tier list) out of the original seven. Even now, in probably the worst state of strategic diversity of the last three years (a result of bringing over the poorly balanced Alliance ships to PvP) we still have roughly six competitively viable ships out of the available twelve.

Anyways, this is my (arguably solicited) analysis on how the mechanics of different game modes impact the diversity of viable ships.

As you've said: this "mode" can already be set up in the game client. So as a one-off event or perhaps part of the "Chaos Skirmish" rotation, it would probably be fine for the more casual audience who simply wants to experience new mechanics in a non-competitive environment.

We've had a lot of bad modes added to the game over the years. When I see posts for mode suggestions I can get overly vigilant.

14
Gameplay / Re: PvP 2v2 with Special Abilities
« on: July 07, 2018, 02:41:54 pm »
In the hypothetical strategy I suggested: you would be waiting out the duration of the abilities, not the cooldown. If your opponent uses any abilities, but is unable to follow up and actually kill you, your opponent is then at the disadvantage of having less abilities available to them in subsequent fights.

In that situation, then the team that used their ability timed it poorly and was outplayed. You shouldn't be using the abilities if you aren't confident that you can capitalize on it.

Again, an environment where you gain a large advantage by baiting out abilities with non-committal charges will incentivize endless disengagement. You say "they were outplayed", but if you know that your opponent is playing to bait you, when will you ever be sure that you can get the kill (especially with defensive abilities that will not increase your damage output). A decent pilot in a fast ship can escape from most fights. Are you only going to play Stormbreaker, Shrike, and Goldfish, to improve your ability to chase?

This will create a one-strategy metagame revolving around a specific band of ships effective at executing that strategy (fast ships).

15
Gameplay / Re: PvP 2v2 with Special Abilities
« on: July 07, 2018, 10:29:39 am »
Cooldowns don't matter until you die, so running to wait for the cooldown is not a valid tactic.

In the hypothetical strategy I suggested: you would be waiting out the duration of the abilities, not the cooldown. If your opponent uses any abilities, but is unable to follow up and actually kill you, your opponent is then at the disadvantage of having less abilities available to them in subsequent fights.

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