On 5/9/2017 at 6:45 AM, MajorJuggler said:

The corollary: better game design will tighten up the relative power difference between squad/ship power levels, and result in far more ships/squads being able to see viable competitive play. The real world is not digital, it is analog, so, for example, lists that are tier 1.5 will still see table time, albeit less than tier 1. "Balanced" is therefore a relative term that can be quantified by how many ships fall behind the power curve.

Yeah I don't understand the argument that "you can't make it perfectly balanced so there's no point trying to make it less unbalanced".

1 hour ago, SOTL said:

Yeah I don't understand the argument that "you can't make it perfectly balanced so there's no point trying to make it less unbalanced".

Nobody is using that argument.

At least, what I am saying, is that every attempt to rebalance the game, by doing the same things that have been done in the past, will unbalance it more and more, and the interim periods of temporary balance before the next overpowered element crystalizes will become shorter and shorter as the game grows and becomes more complex.
I didn't say "Do not attempt to rebalance the game". I said that we are trying to rebalance the game the wrong way.
Instead of rebalancing the game by adding more or tweaking existing variables, we should perhaps the game foundation and constraints that make those variable so hard to balance.
As a simile, instead trying to keep a perfect balance in the water pH, food supply, filters, etc so that 30 different fish can survive in a fishbowl, maybe it would be easier if we had a proper fish tank.

Sure, but if all you've got to hand is the ability to affect food supply/filters etc then you might wish for a proper fish tank but in the meantime you're still going to do your best to stop your fish from swimming the wrong way up.

1 hour ago, SOTL said:

Sure, but if all you've got to hand is the ability to affect food supply/filters etc then you might wish for a proper fish tank but in the meantime you're still going to do your best to stop your fish from swimming the wrong way up.

It's not all what the designers got to hand. In fact, reworking the foundations of the game within certain limit would be simpler than adding more ships and cards, since they can just update the Rules Reference, FAQ or Torunament Rules at will online, without having to reprint anything.
Call it a X-Wing 1.5 without actually going all the way to 2.0, and avoiding a schism in the community.
They can rework the base rules, all rules added in reference cards, the victory conditions, the definition of what the Standard Format must be, etc. That is what I mean with expanding the fish tank.
In the multiple threads about nerfing Advanced SLAM one of the arguments supporting that request is that aces don't have the means to defend against mines. The usual answer is not to bring only aces, but other stuff too that preys on minelayers. The final retort is that there is not room in 100 points to bring enough aces and escorts and stay competitive.
Well, maybe it's not aces, minelayers or escorts the problem. Maybe it the arbitrary restriction of 100 points deathmatch that is choking certain factions, or ship archetypes?

Certainly it's true that bumping the game up to 150 or 200 would most likely open a lot of breathing space for list building. More room for more niche ships to actually be competitive.

Take your typical Aces list. At 150 they could bring some stuff to help deal with bombs.

9 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

So basically, what we're saying here is that the JM5K is the Battle Rifle?

So the solution should be to introduce X-Wing Team SWAT, so anyone who wants to Battle Rifle can Battle Rifle to their heart's content in their Battle Rifle Only mode!

Now, any ideas for X-Wing Grifball?

Hah. That sounds about right.

Nerf Captain Lackwit!

On 5/8/2017 at 7:25 PM, Marinealver said:

Yeah I stopped Halo at Reach. I did try 4 a bit but didn't care for the Promethian weapons (they acted more human than alien not a true hybrid). Also alien weapons for some reason was always weaker than their human counterparts which also made me confused (weren't the human losing?). As for 5 not touching that as long as the requisition store is open (shame really, warzone sounds like an interesting but wasn't human vs covenant and microtransactions can buy you a tank).

As for microtransaction and comparing them to a living collectors game, thing is I can still play with my game after it is discontinued, once the plug is pulled on the servers all the microtransaction virtual loot is gone.

But on to power creep. As I said I think X-wing suffers more from Accretion than power creep. Sure FFG has done for the most part a good job in keeping all the old stuff valuable but the whole new ships in waves which outnumber alt-paint in expansion releases does mean we will have more items than fixes.

They have a mix between human and cov, when it comes to play control, except for the Binary, it plays way different than the other Sniper weapons. All that being said 80% of all the Promethean weapons are more powerful than weapons they share a class with. Hard Light Rifle is the most powerful Precision weapon, Binary Rifles are the most powerful Sniper weapon, Bolt Pistols are equal to Magnum except they track, and when charged its more powerful than other pistol excluding black hole firing Plasma Pistols. Incineration Cannons are ether the fast firing Heavy Weapons, excluding Lunas Lance, or the Most power Heavy Weapons, excluding Lunas lance or when attacking big vehicles, all the Lasers are king at that. Over all the Repeaters are the most powerful SMG if you count there rarest version that causes explosions.

2 hours ago, Black Knight Leader said:

They have a mix between human and cov, when it comes to play control, except for the Binary, it plays way different than the other Sniper weapons. All that being said 80% of all the Promethean weapons are more powerful than weapons they share a class with. Hard Light Rifle is the most powerful Precision weapon, Binary Rifles are the most powerful Sniper weapon, Bolt Pistols are equal to Magnum except they track, and when charged its more powerful than other pistol excluding black hole firing Plasma Pistols. Incineration Cannons are ether the fast firing Heavy Weapons, excluding Lunas Lance, or the Most power Heavy Weapons, excluding Lunas lance or when attacking big vehicles, all the Lasers are king at that. Over all the Repeaters are the most powerful SMG if you count there rarest version that causes explosions.

They still play like human weapons, well human weapons on steroids. No drop, reloading magazines. The Bolt Pistol is probably does the best at blending the two with an overcharged magazine shot. Still too much like human weapons.

Same problem was with planetside 2, the differences was just more of a stat and it seem boring. Granted in classic TR and NC were the ones that had the most identical features but they were opposite spectrum they did feel different, however Vanu did feel alien weapons with alternate fire modes instead of switching ammo, and lasher effects and so on. I don't know maybe I'm being to critical but when I think of distinction I think of like explosive damage or damage over time as compared to +5 to damage.

15 hours ago, Azrapse said:

It's not all what the designers got to hand. In fact, reworking the foundations of the game within certain limit would be simpler than adding more ships and cards, since they can just update the Rules Reference, FAQ or Torunament Rules at will online, without having to reprint anything.
Call it a X-Wing 1.5 without actually going all the way to 2.0, and avoiding a schism in the community.
They can rework the base rules, all rules added in reference cards, the victory conditions, the definition of what the Standard Format must be, etc. That is what I mean with expanding the fish tank.
In the multiple threads about nerfing Advanced SLAM one of the arguments supporting that request is that aces don't have the means to defend against mines. The usual answer is not to bring only aces, but other stuff too that preys on minelayers. The final retort is that there is not room in 100 points to bring enough aces and escorts and stay competitive.
Well, maybe it's not aces, minelayers or escorts the problem. Maybe it the arbitrary restriction of 100 points deathmatch that is choking certain factions, or ship archetypes?

I agree with your over all argument. It would be super hard to playtest a whole new format though. Who knows, maybe they're working on it right now.

5 hours ago, Marinealver said:

They still play like human weapons, well human weapons on steroids. No drop, reloading magazines. The Bolt Pistol is probably does the best at blending the two with an overcharged magazine shot. Still too much like human weapons.

Same problem was with planetside 2, the differences was just more of a stat and it seem boring. Granted in classic TR and NC were the ones that had the most identical features but they were opposite spectrum they did feel different, however Vanu did feel alien weapons with alternate fire modes instead of switching ammo, and lasher effects and so on. I don't know maybe I'm being to critical but when I think of distinction I think of like explosive damage or damage over time as compared to +5 to damage.

Yeah I think you are being to hard on them because they do play differently than the other factions weapons, besides doing more damage. Most are inaccurate unless you aim, ironically the Hard-light Rifle fires faster but is weaker if you don't aim, excluding the Dying Star variant that will cause an enemy to explode in three shots, I think the Barbed Lance does do lasting damage, The Twin Jewels is really good at killing vehicles compared to other Sniper rifles, and I like how it changes its firing pasttern at the end of the shot, its like it was designed to handle moving targets, when it does it, I vap lots of people. I also like the arc from the Needle cannon and that the projectile explodes, out of those weapons I feel the Covs are lamest. Also Ion Grenades detente on impact and leave a field behind for a min while also instantly ionizing vehicles that touch it. The other grenedes just explode, while the Cov has a more powerful one that sicks and has a smaller blast radius.

2 minutes ago, Black Knight Leader said:

Yeah I think you are being to hard on them because they do play differently than the other factions weapons, besides doing more damage. Most are inaccurate unless you aim, ironically the Hard-light Rifle fires faster but is weaker if you don't aim, excluding the Dying Star variant that will cause an enemy to explode in three shots, I think the Barbed Lance does do lasting damage, The Twin Jewels is really good at killing vehicles compared to other Sniper rifles, and I like how it changes its firing pasttern at the end of the shot, its like it was designed to handle moving targets, when it does it, I vap lots of people. I also like the arc from the Needle cannon and that the projectile explodes, out of those weapons I feel the Covs are lamest. Also Ion Grenades detente on impact and leave a field behind for a min while also instantly ionizing vehicles that touch it. The other grenedes just explode, while the Cov has a more powerful one that sicks and has a smaller blast radius.

Yeah I didn't care for ADS in halo also. Adding weapons that only worked in good in ADS (how does your eyeballs increase the damage, what do you got superman eyes?) was another strike against them.

ADS in halo really makes no sense. Why even have it? Your neural implant covers that, it projects a HUD onto the inner surface of your eyes. That HUD accurately syncs up with and shows where your weapon is pointing or where the next shot it gonna hit. Halo gameplay has never been "From the hip".

It's just so **** advanced that holding your gun up to your face is literally outdated.

ADS is a way to reduce sensitivity when using sticks so aiming is easier while still maintaining a good speed for turning around. Giving it further incentives is a bit weird.

19 hours ago, Marinealver said:

Yeah I didn't care for ADS in halo also. Adding weapons that only worked in good in ADS (how does your eyeballs increase the damage, what do you got superman eyes?) was another strike against them.

With the Hard Light it is simulating changing firing modes when you change your aim type with the gun.

Since they are using a huge armory of weapons, and pvp is a simulation, they probably added ads for traing Spartans how to use weapons that don't have smart link hardware. It's like with Lunas Lance, it says in it's description that it's recoil is for simulation difficulty purposes only.

4 hours ago, Black Knight Leader said:

With the Hard Light it is simulating changing firing modes when you change your aim type with the gun.

Since they are using a huge armory of weapons, and pvp is a simulation, they probably added ads for traing Spartans how to use weapons that don't have smart link hardware. It's like with Lunas Lance, it says in it's description that it's recoil is for simulation difficulty purposes only.

It was the market concept of making everything CoD which was ironic because CoD 4 took the concept make everything Halo. Justify it with what ever technobable you want, as far as I'm concerned, it was the suit that made the guns hit harder.

But as far as the post goes, each halo game was different from the other (with exception of Halo 5, that was a microtransaction riddled rip-off of Halo 4). Heck Halo 2 was such a departure that game had more complaints than on this forum. The last Halo game I really liked was Reach which to many FPS players hated it (they wanted CoD). Now I can't fault 343 for making Halo 4 the way it was, you do have to follow the market after all (no matter how vain of an attempt it might be). But it is done, I wanted a Human vs Covenant scenario game, everyone else wanted MLG SWAT.