The crazy part of all of this is that Star Citizen has everything they need to do BOTH 3 and 6 degrees very well! We have planets with atmosphere! We could do faster 3 degree dog fights in atmo and a full 6 degrees in space! It's all there! We could literally have it all!
Average Pilot here, and in the previous flight mode i were getting demomolished but a knew why and started getting better, understanding what a merge is and not just joust boosting. I were getting better and it felt great and very rewarding. I went from using biggest pew pew ships thinking arrow were overrated to the being able to make an arrow move and preferring them. MM is a litteral stat match between ships and feels horrible no matter what you do.
The problem is in any engagement the Arrow should not win against a ship heavier than itself. It should be blown out of the sky 10/10 times. An Arrow/Gladius/Merlin/Merai pilot should have no chance against a Hornet/Scorp/F8 user, but they were beating those ships because of how quickly they were to snap their noses even if the pilot was of equal skill. MM fixes and corrects this imbalance putting those ships in their proper flight category.
@@grygaming5519 Lets be hounest...there is just one category. Most dps and shields win, speed means nothing. I will like to see this being balanced....meta is bucca and Mk2 because why.....dps and shields/hp .The triangle has been eleminated. At some point we will see the pay to win shouts start to come out. Im concierge, so ill just use my big ass ships and make more friends. But is this good for the game? im gonna say it straight, bad pilots like MM cause its the "i can win" setting.
@@grygaming5519 Yeah and thats utterly wrong imho. MM ruined alot. Small agile ships should have an easy time staying behind ships beyond their class ( upwards in size and punch power ). I think shields should ALWAYS regen, slower than they naturally do when fired at, but always regen. So that the DPS of an arrow for example would never get through a shield more than 1 class beyond its own class, thus not beeing able to punch against size 3. Only size 1 and 2.
@@grygaming5519 There are numerous ways to make Light Fighters ineffective against large ships. Such as, Increase weapon ranges based on weapon sizes compared to the every weapon is 1500m of 3.22, allow for active shield generation (which had existed at one point and was removed, which lead immediately to the fighter meta), map ship agility to the triangle as well as weapon capacitor, and shield regen rate.
@@RoxxSerm I agree with this. A small ship with a good pilot should be a pain in the ass, and if it taakes on a heavy fighter it should be able to kill it eventualy but it should take some time to get through the shields and the pilot should would need to be able to avoid the occasional shots that the heavier ship fires once in a while. Yes, with the correct moves the heavier ship will have a small opportunity to shoot at the annoying musqito.
It makes more sense to me to do 6DF and treat the players like adults. Not everybody will be Top Gun, but overall you don't have to be to have fun, learn something, and get a little better (I'm my own example). I'm not a combat centered player. My big space-sim thing is space-to-foot, resource gathering, and evasive combat (smuggling, infiltration, data-running). I wish they'd talk about flight mechanics (or anything) in terms of actual analysis.
Jousting was an issue though. Tricording was tiresome. It made fights boil down to who was more maneuverable regardless of ship class and large-scale ship combat being reduced to a cloud of 1v1 fights. It also catered heavily to light fighters, ignoring how heavy fighters, gunships and sub-capital ships (Hammerhead is a fantastic example of this) should be able to function against their supposed targets. Previously, light fighters like the Gladius would just tricord, circle around, and punish the maneuverability difference. Bringing out a crewed Hammerhead, this ship that is supposed to be a HARD counter to light fighters, was a fruitless and frustrating endeavor. While MM needs a lot of tuning, so did the previous flight model and it took a ton of work and time to get to a semi-usable state. MM allows non-combat focused ships the time and the opportunity to make meaningful decisions against aggressors; does a crewed Constellation Taurus or Caterpillar stand and fight 2-3 fighters, or run? Will my shields and firepower holdout against those fighters? Same goes for asymmetric fights. Should 3 light fighters engage 2 heavy fighters or 2 gunships? I get the frustration, I've seen this happen for every change to the flight model and in the end, only 1 of them was truly terrible. This model is still new and has had only small changes to how it works. As with everything this project does: take a step back and breathe. Play something else for a bit. Have a modicum of faith that the folks working on the MM/flight model have developing a fun challenge for everyone in mind.
"Jousting" is the byproduct of inexperience and cannot be eliminated from the game. It will always exist until players stick around long enough to learn the flight model, which cannot happen until a flight model sticks around. Also, lowering the skill ceiling doesn't eliminate inexperience. It just lowers the reward for practicing and getting good.
A little detail in the Expanse a lot of people miss that shows just how much attention they paid to Newtonian physics- look at the PDTs in the clips you showed. When you see a close-up, look at the back of the turret. There is a small jet of flame coming out of the rear as they fire. That's a small counter-thruster designed to compensate for the thrust caused by the projectiles going out the other end to keep from throwing the ship's maneuvering out of whack. THAT is serious attention to how space combat works. CIG going with the Airplanes In Space trope is a let-down after what they've done so far, and I would hope they can take some cues from The Expanse, Battlestar Galactica, and Babylon 5 as to how flight in space should be done.
Been playing SC for 3+ years and consider myself a casual player, not particularly focused on combat. And haven’t been too concerned with MM changes. But this resonates. Previously I felt that I was learning how to *fly* in 6dof. Now, I feel I have to learn “MasterModes”, which is just a game mechanic, and not “flying”
@@lss247 It felt a hell of a lot more like flying is the point they were making. How can you be so willfully ignorant to the extent that you attempt to mischaracterize someone else's comments/feelings on pre/post MM.
In my head I always figured if you were fighting in the atmosphere of any planet it would be more 3 dof and space combat can be more 6 dof but what do I know
I believe the 2.63 flight model was the best. Effective combat range was close and the speed was high with six degrees of freedom. What limited your change of direction was simply G forces. Vastly more fun than anything since
Completely agree. The solution to getting 'chase' is to keep forward thrust substantially more powerful than any other thruster inputs (which is also necessary for 'control surface' behavior in atmo) and to make G force effects more closely approximate real life - e.g. the body tolerates negative Gs better than positive Gs. That way roll and pitch still become the dominant, but not exclusive, maneuvers.
I didn't experience that but I agree that if they would keep 6 DOF but shrink the effective combat zone, it would be a better solution than just going 3 DOF mode or MM as is.
Who do you think complained about the 2.63 flight model. The guy in the video complained about MM, because the speed was too limited and Medium and Heavies were just blowing light fighters out of the sky. A MK1 Hornet could out turn and out gun a Gladius in 2.63 just on how to hold and bleed your speed to not black out, while maintaining high energy to strafe. Then you also add on that in 2.63 the Missiles didnt hit like a wet noodle. A1 is just crying over how lights got kneecapped, flight is becoming more accessible thus cutting into those flight school dollars. We're also at version 1 of MM, so once Armor v1 and shields v1 comes online with Maelstrom. Lights are going to get slapped with a nerf bat and we'll probably see more adjustments and refinements with MM. All it is is complaining because it puts everyone back at square one and PVP babies cannot have that.
@@grygaming5519 I don't disagree with you. I was just pointing out that I have not enjoyed PVP in any iteration as much as back in 2.63. The guy who developed that flight model and was working to improve it was let go, or left on his own accord I'm not sure. He was on to something which could have been improved over all of this time, but we keep throwing out the old model and reinventing the wheel. Lots of confusion as to where we should go. I am hopeful we will improve master modes and get to something everyone can enjoy but still has enough depth.
Croberts wants Star Wars style, "WW2 Dogfights in Space". This is very clear in all of their cinematic ads. You don't see 6DOF strafing in any of them, you see Top Gun chases. Except, the engine doesn't work that way. A1's contrast of SW and BSG is dead on the money there. If they want BSG, they need to *drastically* reduce the acceleration of thrusters compared to the main engines. If they want Star Wars, they need to abandon the idea that this is a space sim. They can't have both. They have to choose.
6DOF is the way lets get back to 1.3 tunings and leave maincentric to atmosphere where it belongs. CIG doesn't need to choose because there is already place for each.
I still think that the main engines would let you accelerate faster forward, especially if its a ship designed to be flown around in atmo, as well as the larger capital ships needing their large main thrusters to get a lot of acceleration going. Ofc the manuvering thrusters will work in space too, but i think you get what im saying. Maybe with engineering and overheating your manuvering thrusters by firing them for too long will change that. Especially since its harder to disperse heat in space the smaller the object (fighters and their tiny manuvering thrusters)
Echoing what others have said: it's absurd to think thrusters should have acceleration comparable to the main engines. That's like saying the RCS on the Space Shuttle should have similar thrust to the mains, which is nonsense. There are BSG mods for Freespace 2, such as Diaspora, that have successfully delivered the kind of 6DOF movement that A1 is talking about, and they do it by being exactly the "maincentric" thing you're suggesting is something to be avoided. Just my two cents. If you disagree, that's fine, but if that's the case I'd invite you to look at the size of the main engines on any Star Citizen ship compared to the thrusters. It should be pretty obvious where the majority of maneuvering power should be coming from.
100% agreement that the model should be 6dof in space and much more 3dof in atmosphere - one of the most fun parts about flying in atmosphere used to be using either pitch or 45 depending on your ships speed and ability to handle in atmosphere at different points of the engagement
When I pledged it was for a spiritual successor to wing commander with drop-in drop-out campaign co-op plus dedicated servers and mod support. They kept selling the modding manual until October 2023 but don't really want to talk about that anymore. As for the rest, they don't seem to feel like delivering the co-op campaign anymore. Meanwhile the worst part is the apologists who hide behind the 2013 vote to say it's OK that they are a decade late. Meanwhile in reality that vote stated clearly in the premise that it would lead to more being developed at a higher quality level AND done faster. I'm glad I stopped giving them money in 2014 when they skipped their stated release target - I'll let other people give them 250 thousand USD a day to not deliver.
@@17trunX yeah I understand ttk but that's an easy tuning change. The flight style was WAY better, positional changes and advantages we're on point in .22. .23 will screw average pilots over more than before because now you can't run away with momentum
@@RN1441 I get that, but it's never been a 3DOF game though right? The rest has always been in the air with SC. Many ups and downs and will probably continue to be that way.
said it before, I'll say it again. They should have experimented with interdiction ship items to slow ships down and jam QT that most if not all combat ships could equip, just like a weapon slot (or a medium slot if you play eve online). They could have experimented with the power triangle, making it take time to move, making it require 100% engines to QT. Etc. Instead we have a frankenstein mess that makes no sense
Yes this, lots of players were saying they should try things like this. "Crowd control" mechanisms, guns that slow ships down, maybe a hacking thing... yes
6DF without question, I'm going to regret having ever pledged for this game (since 2013) if they pursue 3DF. Great breakdown all round. I hope CIG sees this.
I'm newer to this game and found this super interesting, "Appealing To Everyone Means You Appeal To No One", I hope this game leans into what it is instead of something super dumbed down, I want the in depth systems to learn
@@igorpniak8308 I think more people just need to get into more in depth games, I think most of the appeal for this game will come from just completing features, meaningful gameplay loops, and ironing out bugs along with all the other incredible stuff they want to achieve, like shroud played this game and he did not have a good time with it, not because he's a casual but because there's not enough of a working game in the areas he wants yet
@Exccentrik You are very much overestimating how people work. Just look at any MMO that has stable and sizable playbase, and it's capable of sustaining it's reoccurring costs, a thing Star Citizen will need to achive to not die out like many, many lesser known or forgotten titles. There are three like that currently, World of Warcraft, ESO, and FFXIV. All of them are very simple at it's core, approachable, with relatively flat skill curves, a lot of engaging content, and a huge amount of QoL features. Those are things that SC lacks, even in its yet unfulfilled designs. Even a game like New World is like that, while not being as successful as the aforementioned trio. People really overlook the realities of MMO games. Sure, deep, engaging workign game is great for a single-player title. What works for 100h doesn't necessarily work for a few hundreds if not thousands of hours, for many people at once. And the thing is, every MMO lives of casuals. They are the biggest part of the population. Their financial backing contributes the most. Not a small number of whales. So even a MMO game that you described, with complete features, meningfull gameplay loops, a ton of content, and great gameplay will not be successful if it can't attract enough casual players to sustain itself. And SC isn't casual friendly game in reality nor in desing. So it will struggle with this, unless it will go more casual route, which already happens with Master modes, respawn changes, or rework of FPS experience. So yeah, "Appealing to Everyone means you appeal to no one" will not work for SC.
Another phrasing is that 'if you don't pick your specific targets, you won't hit any of them'. Star Citizen has done something similar in that when it's time to sell something they swear the game is going to be 'the best at _____ ever with no compromises' yet here nearly 12 years in to development (14 if we count the pre-production) it's clear that they never had a guiding vision beyond 'sell more features'. We don't have any information on how the parts of the game are meant to interact, not even a flight model nailed down for what's supposed to be a game with a heavy space combat focus.
@@igorpniak8308 you said a very important thing, a key aspect of MMO. CONTENT! Where is the content in SC? We are mostly getting mechanics, the flight model is a Mechanic and has nothing to do with content. To give you an example, RAID mechanics in Destiny are very difficult, surely not accessible for everyone, but the CONTENT is also there hence the game is still alive and has many fans.
You have done a wondeful job of eloquently giving clear explanation for what I've been feeling but struggling to explain. Actual combat and pvp aside, the whole flight model change has ripped the fun and frenetic feel out of flying and has all but completely neutered decoupled flight.
Ever taken a shit where it stops halfway? Then you take a big breath, struggle and double down trying to squeeze it out. Only to have it break off with the other half still inside you and be left red faced, gasping for air and back to square one. That's s.c development....
100% agree. The artificial limitation of boost is extremely frustrating to have to learn. And call me crazy, but I liked where they were going with hover-mode, where ships couldn't just float in gravity by the strength of their weakest thrusters.
I was lucky enough to start playing at the end of 3.22 (a couple months before 3.23) and tbh I’d be upset if they continued with 3DOF. I loved how flight worked in 3.22. I sucked really bad at first, but once I got hours in and was able to fly, it felt so rewarding. I don’t get that feeling with master modes
The flight system of 3.22 had filled the game with runners who fled at such high speeds that they were impossible to catch, regenerated their shields, then came back to fight, again and again, and again... Then they would flee in QT as soon as they lost the advantage, often in their big ships meant for multicrew but flown solo. Missile spam was extremely common, and whether or not you could flare them was highly dependent on the servers. The so-called skilled mechanic of "experienced" pilots was just a noob-killing tactic not intended by CIG, which involved disabling the gimbal of all weapons by pressing three keys at the same time to activate the space handspinner gameplay. And that's less than 10% of the problems that existed. It was better? BIG LOL
I'm more frustrated by the atmospheric flight model built in to some of the newer ships like the F7c/a MK2 and Firebird. You try to pull a high g turn in pitch and the ship tries to fight you, often lurching in the opposite direction. it makes no sense at all. Fighting in Microtech atmosphere is just awful. you need to reduce your speed to about 60% of scm to get a smooth bank turn, even when rolling into pitch first. The fact the other ships don't have the same issue makes it much much worse.
I 100% agree with this. I have heard that it's due to atmospheric flight being implemented on some ships but others have not had it implemented yet. Hopefully they will get implemented soon because the F7A is atrocious in atmo compared to many other ships.
Was doing some LRTs with friend yesterday and I remember hearing A1 and Subliminal discuss how bad the avenger titan was in atmo. Man, trying to do a pitch up, nose to target was horrendous. The ship is fighting against you, and it probs didn’t help that I was in coupled mode. When I decoupled it was a bit more manageable but jeez it was a nightmare
Not if you fly in pitch and don’t over do the acceleration when turning. Of course if you try and fly like in space you will screw up lol. If you start trying to turn in yaw and have too high energy you will wobble but that’s normal for atmosphere. Adjust your flying
Star Cit was the most challenging combat flight system I've ever encountered in 3.22, it was completely humbling fighting someone who had practiced 6 DOF. I'd like to see 6 DOF become the focus.
6DOF never disappeared. All ship have 6 degrees Of Freedom movement in Master Mode system.... I don't even understand where that "6DOF" argument comes from in the vid. I must be stupid, but to me, "raise SCM speed so that 6DOF comes back" comes, physically and mathematically, out of nowhere. It makes no sense to me. "boost lateral speeds", "lower projectile speed" (because it's an issue of target speed/projectile speed ratio, after all), these kind of pleas, yup, I'd get them, in relation to 6DOF. But "boost SCM speed" ?? I'm like, "what?" oO
@@randomly-genrated Master Mode is not that bad for a single player game such as SQ42. If you got in Pirates Swarm and dogfight the enemy fighters, it's kind of OK. Now don't get me wrong, I don't like MM. But I think they can release SQ42 with MM.
People need to stop calling this a sim when the lasers just act like slow machine gun bullets without ammo instead of the reality of them being hitscan light speed weapons.
@@Flatfootsy Getting proper realistic, easily achieved, physics on one of your "simulator's" primary weapon types is something you would think would be important to a "simulation". Lol
I've got faith they'll sort the system out, especially with high quality feedback like this. As long as we don't have to deal with actual orbital mechanics. I don't want to manage orbital vectors in the middle of a dogfight
Ever since 3.23 my play time has slowly dwindled to not playing at all due to how awful flight feels. Ive said it on spectrum, ive said it in comments, i simply do not enjoy flying anymore regardless of combat or not
SC has always had this kind of identity crisis and not just in this area. On one hand they are obsessed with 'immersion' down to little nuts and bolts but at the same nothing really destroys immersion more than multiplayer and PVP, which they want. Well, which is it? Gimbles and m/k to point and shoot or flight stick and maneuver? So many areas and its clear they are like a monkey with its fist stuck in a jar. They desperately want the shiney inside, but they see the hunter walking up to them. All they have to do is let go, but they can't because they are obsessed with having it both ways.
Here's a take from someone who primarily plays PvE. Stick with me here, cause I get the feeling people are gonna assume a lot based on that: I like the idea of MM, and finally associating ship roles and keeping things in their lane, so we don't have these situations where ships are bodying ships that should be more maneuverable, or tankier. But there's more issues with it than pros I can find. I suck at PvP, but I felt like I was actually DOING something to not die in the PU, in the old flight model. And there were times I survived in WEIRD ships because I was so focused on getting into Grim with what I had that I'd use every capacity my ship had to survive. But mostly, flying felt *good*. It felt intuitive, it felt fun, it felt like something that - if I put the time in - I could eventually get to a point where I could go toe-to-toe instead of run, in less meta-y ships. I don't feel that now. Atmospheric flight feels like hell, and doesn't make me feel like I'm flying a ship with insane amounts of thrust on every surface of it, but a prop plane. It feels like I'm playing War Thunder. Space flight feels so touch and go - Where-as I used to be able to fly over the wrong end of a hangar, decouple, burn to change heading, coast into a hangar, slam the afterburner in reverse to arrest momentum, and touch down in one smooth motion? Now, even with turning off the landing gear assist, it feels like a clunky mess setting down in a hangar. No longer can I feel like a competent pilot, I instead feel like someone letting the clutch go too soon in a manual transmission car. And if I want to try to speed up my approach instead of slowing to a crawl, swapping modes, etc? Acceleration is so insane now that you'll just pancake into the flight control room. It feels so backwards. Nothing feels "right". Everything feels like it has training wheels on it you can't take off, inherently. And again - I don't understand stuff like tricording, I can't put up a fight in anything less than a Hornet Ghost, I can't outmaneuver folks who understand the actual flight system like they breathe and eat it. I just knew how *my* ships worked, how they moved, and how to utilize that to do what I want. Even taking the time with each of my ships the past few weeks, nothing feels right. It all feels awkward and unwieldy, and both combat and travel feel like an utter mess to me. That's as a PvE player, so I can only assume how frustrated PvP players must be with the changes. Right now, it doesn't feel fun, anymore. I don't enjoy taking my ships out anymore, I don't enjoy trying to escape in a dangerous situation, I don't feel like my ships feel like ships anymore. And to top it off - I've been backed since 2012, but only started ACTUALLY playing in December. I've got less than a year of experience in the game, a few hours each week, so this change should have meshed better with me and newer players than anyone else. Instead, I just feel underwhelmed and limited in expressing the capacity of what the ship I worked for/own can do. As an afterward - I also wonder how much of this is cycling in folks who don't get why things changed over the years from SQ42, or are newer to the team and trying to reinvent the wheel. Like you said - I've watched development while I couldn't play due to having a shit PC for YEARS. I've seen the complaints about previous flight models, I've seen them go through iterations, I've seen that feedback pour in, and I've seen them all come close to being "almost there" according to the community, just to get trashed to try something new. It seems to be a problem with a lot of systems in the game, not just the flight model. We see development and refinement, and then things will just stagnate and get replaced.
With MM and "WW2" in space meta, pvp is will become something to avoid all together. It's not rewarding, it's not fun, and it's not worth the effort, time and energy. All this because it's just becoming a bland, run off the mill arcade spaceshooter. Hope it will be fixed. All this tech to play around with must result in something great in the end. I think CIG first step in making it great, is to get the barebones into the game and runnable as it is right now. Changes must be done afterward when the tech is validated trough usage.
one thing you hear over and over and over is "WW2 dogfights in space". And I think this video touches on it, but WW2 dogfights didn't have 6 DOF. It's an impossible thing to aim for. I really wish CIG would just embrace 6 DOF so we had BSG style combat.
@@alexrod3505 they want "heavy fighters" too, literally the worst kind of planes to ever be conceived at the dawn of ww2 and they all failed miserably and were (literally) wiped out during the battle of Britain 😂
Which is exactly what I have said for years. But white knights told me to stfu and just trust CIG and their developers. This has never been done before and bla bla.
i dont get it, you still have decoupled mode and up/down and side thrusters, you can easily rotate around a ship that you are attacking while drifting in its flight direction. That is far from WWII Airplanes... I think most of you guys are just complaining, because you need to reevaluate your tactics and previous meta doesnt work anymore. I love the new flight model and prefer it over any flight model that was in place before.
Absolutely fantastic and well-articulated breakdown of the issues and their potential solutions. CIG's handling of flight physics is going to make or break the game as a project, and the time for them to dial things in is rapidly dwindling. Here's to hoping they take the community's good advice and make decent choices.
As always A1, though I can't say that I understand or agree with all of your points, your presentation, dedication, and passion for SC is much appreciated. Like many as I was initially excited for MM, but the more opinions I read, the more I play, the less I'm enjoying it. As you point out, it's a flight model made for SQ42 first, and that's becoming more and more apparent. SC needs a different solution, and I hope that the devs get a chance to realize that solution. Unfortunately, they may not get a chance to revisit the flight model until after SQ42 releases.
See, I love this kind of response, you are respectful, kind and still get your point across. I wish more people disagreed with my points like you do. God Bless
I hope they do make it balanced because most ships have the capacity to 6dof even the freighters but alas.. it's not to late for them to fix and clean up the mm scene.Great vid btw @@Avenger__One
I wasn't your fan due your focus on pvp and not much else BUT this time you hit nail on the head! 100% agree! and you managed to add perfect visual representation of fly models you are talking about. Fantastic work! Love it! Maybe I would use different video from the expanse.. probably attack on station with stealth ship but that not important. Great, great work. Thank you. I am personally in SC because I wanna play space game... not nonsense with planes in space.. I'm here for things that makes space true space and for feeling that I am in the space in my ship.. no feeling that I am in air in my plane. For that I would go for different game.
You said something interesting. We have space and we have planets. We can do both. CIG can have their cake and eat it too. 3 dof in atmosphere, 6 dof without. Different ships are more useful in different scenarios. Nothing really does that.
I literally switched to playing DCS since MM as I just don’t feel the depth and freedom of choices I felt when flying with the old fly model - and I never played DCS before, I just like the fact that you actually feel like you are learning to fly a complex piece of high tech. MM killed that feeling for me in SC. Wasn’t even an actual decision I made, I just don’t feel like playing it anymore since 3.23.
So many people would say "scam citizen" as if that were the largest problem. Ive always thought the actual largest threat to the game wasnt building the game... it was balencing it to make it fun. All the tech... giant world... server meshing.... fleets.... is kind of pointless if none of it is fun.
I miss the old pre 3.0 flight model. Ships felt like precision instruments and high skill fights came down to who could ride the line before blacking out. The fights were close nose to nose between 50 and 100m, each ship fighting for just the right angle.
This is a great video. In particular, as you say, it is such a shame since they can have it all, with 3-DOF in atmo and 6-DOF in space. Give us a real space sim and let us feel the difference between atmo and space to it's full extent!
I want 6 dof and high speed space fighting. They didn’t need to make master modes. They just needed to rebalance ship weapons, and armor. And then 90% of the issues in the game’s combat would be solved. They kind of just attacked the problem from the wrong end. All they needed to do was rebalance the ship weapons a gladius couldn’t take one two full constellations simultaneously and then make it so that turrets were move effective against light fighters. Just because the skill ceiling is high, doesn’t mean that the combat is bad. The skill ceiling is high for a lot of games, like dota or counterstrike. But a ton of people still play them even though they’re hard mechanically because the challenge is really rewarding. They should just go back to the previous flight model and rebalance weapons.
You couldn’t make turrets more effective against light fighters because the fighters were too agile and fast relative to the projectile speed and server/client response time. That is one of the reasons they slowed combat down. Without MM there’s a lot more that would have to change than weapon rebalancing and armor. Huge skill gap in games like CS is still fine, because the ttk is short. It’s hard to master, but even a noob CAN kill a good player. A noob killing a good pilot in the old SC flight model is unheard of. The ttk is longer, allowing a good player to escape even the worst situations.
My stance has always been get the physics right, get it as realistic as possible within game design parameters and let the players figure out what's the best flight strategy. Personally I'd love a full newtonian model without speed limits outside of atmospheric friction but I know I'm in the minority and that leaves things less accessible.
I agree with you, I also specifically really want inherited momentum / relative speed because it would allow snubs and such to deploy from a carrier at speed. Trying to take a Fury out of a moving Corsair is death. The transition from ship to space is just actually a fucking barrier between realities.
I've never been an ace PvPer by any stretch of the imagination, but everything you said here resonated with me so, so much. I've been involved with this game for 10+ years now because I thought it was going to be an authentic - and I love that word that you used, authentic - space simulation game. Maybe not a brutally realistic take on space combat like The Expanse, but still done with a focus on believability/authenticity. BSG is a fantastic example of what I mean. I truly thought that most of Star Citizen's backers were on the same page about that. It's only (relatively) recently that I've encountered lots of people arguing in favor of a "WWII planes in space" style of gameplay. These people often use the argument that Chris Roberts made Wing Commander and therefore Star Citizen's combat will be the same. And it may be similar to an extent, but I was always under the impression that Star Citizen's combat would be more than Wing Commander with modern graphics. Maybe an influx of new fans has made the community and devs lose touch with what this game was supposed to be, or maybe I've just been out of touch, I truly don't know. All I do know is that I have always enjoyed playing this game, at least for a little while every patch, all the way back since the DFM days. But since MM came out I just can't find any enjoyment with it. I've tried doing other gameplay loops besides space combat, but if the core of the game is flying your ship, and that feels bad.... what is the point?
what made the 3.22 model so fun was that you knew you could do more, like there was always something to improve on or learn or do differently and a lot of the engagements felt different from each other because there were more valid maneuvering options and decisions. Different pilots flew differently. Combat in MM right now is copy and paste, every engagement is the same engagement.
The crazy thing is the game can be both since it has both space and atmospheric flight, each should be very different. Forget being planes in space, be 3DOF planes in atmo and 6DOF in space.
I don't wanna fly my ship like a plane. At the end of the day I'm just having way less fun in this patch than I've had in the past. It really bums me out.
Been playing for 3 years, poured a decent amount of money into it. Came for the flight model and now I've played 8 hours of 3.23 testing MM and I've decided to quit until something changes. Didn't even log in for invictus nor did I buy anything like I wanted. Its just sad
same reason... But unfortunately, according to my observations, intuition and trends, it will all come down to the most primitive arcade game. Because people (humanity) are overwhelmingly degraded (this is solely my opinion and observation). And on the other hand, it brings a lot of money to populists. And unfortunately, oddly enough, Star Citizen is about money and promises of a happy tomorrow. So my hopes for the best are illusory...
The new "Flight" model has no flight. I feel like I'm in a flying saucer just kind of hovering and pointing where I go. Everything is just aiming and going or aiming and shooting. There's no thought to it.
I always thought the Arrow Trailer was funny when the released it. We were never able to really pull off that kind of maneuver. It also feels like that is how Chris envisioned how the combat would be like. Which if it was and we could pull cool stuff off like that. It would be kinda fun in my opinion!
They are having us player test/refine the cinematic pve focused flight model for the Squadron 42 in the PU. Avenger comes so very close to answering his own question in this video. It all adds up to this conclusion.
The 6DoF BSG / Expanse flight model was what I signed up for. They can give us a decent atmospheric flight model that emphasises flight control surfaces and full 6DoF space flight which is the best of all worlds rather than the current MM which is just the worst... it feels like a space FPS. Soon as someone gets a bead on you, you're pretty much screwed. One thing I think they could do is make manoeuvring deltaV-limited: there is so much scope for thrusters that behave in different ways... efficiency (specific impulse), duration of 'available' thrust (bit like afterburner), 'peak' sustainable thrust, a range of acceleration and jerk profiles, different thrusters ratings on different axes, rates of recharge, reaction mass consumption rates... they can create a lot of variation but it all involves having a reasonably high cap on the velocity that allows those variants to actually make a difference.
I think the Elite Dangerous flight model is superior to Star Citizen. In theory it's 6DOF, but the strafing thrusters are fairly weak and if you turn off flight assist to face off your flight vector, you lose rotation stabilizing. The makes it MUCH more difficult to fly with flight assist off so most people fly as a 3DOF game. This gives the nose to tail combat where strafing is often used to widen or narrow your turn radius to help align your guns or evade incoming fire.
It certainly feels a lot better than what we are forced to use now in MM. Well, except for the unfair disadvantage of the 'blue zone' nonsense where your ship rotates like a snail at low speeds, except when you turn flight assist off. That whole blue zone thing is also trying to force atmospheric flight behavior on a space game
This was my point. Strafe is causing the headaches. Reduce the effectiveness of strafe and combat becomes more manageable as a modern day jet dogfighter. Keep strafe in you either have face to face at slow speeds or you go back to jousting.
For me the real endgame of ED wasn't the cutters and corvettes, it was gitting gud with the smallest ships with FA off... the fact that it's so hard for a while makes it incredibly satistying once your 6dof muscle memory 'clicks', contolling both attitude and translation smoothly. I would love if SC gave us the option to turn rotational stabilising off, for us weirdos who enjoy that. Racing would be especially cool with only 'manual' thruster control i.e. FA off (in SC would be decoupled + no attitude/rotation stabilising)
6 DoF, but with better ship to ship tuning. Also, rear thrust was never felt big compared to the 5 other directional thrusts. Make it like the Expanse and flip 180 to slow down.
I just want to go back to 3.22. Better yet, go back to 3.13, when outfitting a ship actually mattered and required game knowledge and skill with specific systems. Every step has been a reduction in weapon/ship/flight diversity, and now we're to the point there's effectively a handful of reskinned ships and weapons.
I still think shields should block ALL damage, and the aim is to get them down and THEN can do dmg vs hull and penetrate (only with ballistics) and can damage components. Also lasers better vs shields than ballistics otherwise ballistics have no downside (except ammo limit). And more shield management options. And a very clear direct indicator when you're being shot at.
Nail on the head so far, I'm 8:30 minutes in - taking the words out of my mouth! Personally, I lean towards the 6doF land, coming from an older 6doF game that I really loved (and continually try to get people to play) - I didn't play SWS's or ED because of the feel, Star Citizen at the time I got it felt more true to 6doF and that's one of the reasons I didn't ever play ED or SWS's. Just a personal preference. Honestly, BSG is so cinematic as well - I think 6doF can be as cinematic. Will edit this more as I watch 14:20 - yes! Really liking this - 100% spot on. 16:30 - yes! 6doF has its problems, and it *is* rare which makes it very foreign, which also makes it hard to pick up. For probably 99% of people, its a new way of thinking of things. Even if you remove trichording and 45's - its still going to be hard to pickup. But its deep, and rewarding, and unique when you learn it. Really spot on insights I think sir. 19:13 - ooo, now it gets interesting ! 20:04 - jousting??? Really? The new FM has more jousting. Not really as far of distances - like the jousts are tighter, but its really *really* easy to just blow through things and because our backstrafe is nerfed (because backstrafe is evil of course!) we can't catch or properly counter blow-throughs (jousts). At least in 3.22 you could: 1. Identify a jousty guy 2. Wait for him to begin a joust 3. Start moving backwards at speed 4. Wait 5. Oops now he's saddled and completely fucked. GG 21:00 - yes LMAO. This "jousting" thing and "backstrafing" thing - in 3.22 these were only ever an issue if you were new IMO. Annoying - yes. Effective? Only sometimes. I'm sure you'll agree, 99% of the time its just way better in 3.22 to push and get close instead of backstrafe or joust. 29:30 - YES. Wish I could upvote this video twice. I really thought I'd like MM, on paper some of the things were similar to that older 6doF I played, but playing it now I really miss 3.22 and previous patches.
Not yet an SC player, but yeah bang on, Elite has 6Dof and despite its issues, the flight model is the best part of the game. SC should absolutely bring the fluidity and depth of 6DoF to bear because its a much more rich environment to profit from it
I feel like a high barrier to entry isn't so bad when you consider there's many styles of play that don't depend on you being a fighter pilot. It allows for people to specialize in certain gameplay loops and collaborate with people who have other skills. i.e. you could be a scrapper and want some defense from pilots who want to play security
Re: fighter pilots and high barriers... Fighter pilots are held up as being the ultimate pilot: it's _supposed_ to be hard! If you want an easy time flying, you want to be a commercial pilot - transporting passengers or freight, not exchanging weapon fire.
@@brad433 Oh, it is is it? I was under the impression they were aiming more for "simulator" than "game". They're going to some baffling lengths for realism if realism is not the goal. That whole immersion thing is reliant upon verisimilitude - your brain not suddenly objecting loudly because what you're experiencing is very much _not_ what you know actually happens. Eg: Physicalised cargo, rather than magic pockets with infinite capacity. You know full well that fighter pilots are the "Best of the best of the best. Sir!" and if you're able to phone it in whilst half drunk, you're not going to enjoy it for long.
@@CyberiusT Yeah it is. None of these ships are of a design even remotely influenced by actual physics. You’re eating and loading cargo to convey that you live in this world, but this world’s physics has never been very realistic and never will be. I guess your brain never objected to disabled ships and debris coming to a stop on their own in space? The combat system will be whatever helps the game appeal to the most people, and function well within the limits of netcode, not some “simulation” that never really existed, so a hardcore community can make combat pointless to anyone without the time to dedicate to space nerd Top Gun on TH-cam. Whatever they have to do to prevent that is what they need to do, and ultimately prevent such a wide skill gap or difference of capability from unintuitive systems. MM is a step in the right direction and hopefully the beginning of the end of the light fighter meta, in favor of differentiation, class counters and team play. I don’t even care how they get there so long as they get there. You’re not the best of the best. You’re a guy playing a video game fantasizing about being a space fighter pilot, just like the less sweaty guy. If your game requires a training program to have any shot of defending yourself, and even experienced players often cant discern what’s gone wrong, you’re doing something wrong as a game developer. Combat should not be frustrating and obtuse to new players.
As much as it pains me to say that, but I agree with you. I played SpaceSims from childhood and also became a VERY skilled WW2 plane pilot in recent years. And I must say that nothing beats the elegance of that WW2 flight model. But it is not just 3DOF - there is also an definitive up and down and with that comes 9,81m/s² acceleration - or 1G - constantly pulling you down and influencing energy state. The constrictions resulting from plane geometry and Gs make for a very elegant flight model that allows you to apply tons of skill, but at the same time limit pilots to what they can do. Flying up means they slow down and vice versa, they can do a lot of maneuvres but they cannot change their energy state abruptly - thus there is always a level of predicatibility that just isn't in 3DOF-in-space and even less in 6DOF. As an experienced WW2 pilot, there just is no jousting. You do not fly straight towards a target, pot shots are dangerous and very unreliable, instead you merge, but once merged the actual fight for positioning starts, and there is no way for one party or another to just "boost out" and force a complete reset of the tactical situation. Equivalent would be to dive away, but it doesn't immediately remove you from danger nor does it mean you can't be chased (Depending on planes specs). Combat in WW2 has nothing to do with firepower and armor, and everything to do with flying maneuvers and tactics. The actual battle is the battle for position, where skill is everything. You can have the largest calibre weapons, with an enemy on your 6 they will not do you any good. And all the guy on your 6 needs is really just some machine gun. In fact, heavy weapons weigh you down, decreasing your effectiveness as a dogfighter! (But increasing your effectiveness against larger planes than your own, where you don't need as much maneuvrability to win the positioning fight). After the positioning fight, pulling the trigger is really more of a formality and gunnery skill is quite quickly developed compared to the other skills necessary. The other thing is the disparity between offensive and defensive technology. In WW2, a single gun burst can bring down a fighter and even a bomber. This makes for an extremely elegant system. You would develop very specific tactics on how to engage a bomber for example, because even 1 bullet from a turret could disable your plane, take it out or straight up kill you. But those tactics only worked because the bombers couldn't just maneuvre around wildly to change their firing solution on you or evade. But we mostly don't want fast kills in SC, especially for larger ships, where an entire crew shouldn't be taken out of the game from one gun run and "death of a spaceman" is a legitimate thing. Now it is a bit unintuitive, but shields effectively negating pot shots are a good thing here, because this focuses the tactics back on proper maneuvering, acquiring a firing solution where you can actually dish out your full damage potential to make a kill. Now with 3DOF-in-space, all of the above doesn't apply anymore. The fight for position is effectively nonexistent, because at any point in time a pilot can just turn around ("Fly backwards") and bring their guns on you. It eliminates the entire "dance". Now we need 3DOF to make the game accessible at all for beginners. To this end, there are flight assists essentially breaking 6DOF down into 3DOF (with some elements remaining like strafing to make landings easier etc., but we're talking combat so I'll focus on that.) Also, your point "why not both - 3DOF in atmos and 6DOF in space" - I really love that idea. It would make for so much depth, players can chose their feelgood variant and force fights there, beginners will also first fly in atmos and thus have it easier. Now what does that mean for SC and MM? I tested master modes extensively both in AC pre-patch and now in the PU. Here's my ideas: -Boost mechanic is super annoying to use. I would rather have it removed or change it to fixed one-click power surge as in Elite: Dangerous. -I have a hard time identifying flight maneuvers and tactics that bring any actual benefit. -Especially so with anything larger than a small fighter. You are too slow to evade anything and can't fight for control. It is a weird state of trying to get guns on whilst trying to kite. You are maneuvering heavily against the sluggishness with a ship obviously not designed to be maneuvered like this. -Makes it hard to hit anything above your size with cutlass and larger. Since you can't fight for position, it becomes mostly a damage race. However the old model was far from perfect as well. As a lifelong experienced PVP pilot (Elite Dangerous, War Thunder Sim. Mode (VR), Space Games Back until XwingVSTiefighter) it took me 3 months of intensive learning, including tutoring videos, to even become vaguely competent - and still didn't really have a chance against dedicated experienced PVPers. I can only imagine what that must feel like to someone not as experienced as me. While I love the learning part, even over long stretches, there needs to be more payout from progressing along the route. There is a lot of players not so much interested in PVP or combat. They want to fly their space trucks about, but they also need to feel that they have a chance to defend themselves against PVPers with their turrets or whatnot...because if that doesn't work, why have them in the first place? I think we could draw more inspiration from Elite: Dangerous. The PVP combat FM isn't perfect there and has led to certain meta movements and loadouts as well, but it does a better job when it comes to fight for position and predictability. The way ships are designed in SC can't be changed and they are geometrically designed with more of a 3DOF model in mind. (Guns facing forwards, main engines pushing forward). Taking that into account it makes a lot of sense to me that we have asymmetrical thruster power and should keep with that in order to somewhat break true 6DOF down into more of a hybrid. The way the tunings are right now however, doesn't really feel good in any way. Space Drag is very stupid. It is a tough nut to crack and we need to appreciate that, but I feel that CIG does not have the necessary amount of flight experience and understanding amongst their staff right now. Ultimately it comes from SC's vision being just too broad. It wants to achieve being an MMO, an RPG, a flight combat sim, space trucking sim etc. All of these however have very specific requirements that partly overlap and conflict with each other. So as painful as it is, in order to fit the vision combat can simply not be overly complex or in a way that conflicts with other vision goals.
The problem with Star Citizen's combat model is that CIG keeps trying to develop a resource management game rather than a sim or even just a very fun sci-fi game with space and ground elements.
What MMO isn't ultimately a resource management game at heart? This argument doesn't make sense to me. If you just want a fun sci-fi game with space and ground elements, that's s42.
@@TheRedEyeChannel My argument doesn't make sense to you because you're purposefully conflating "a resource management game" with "a game with resource management elements". Your response shifts the discussion away from Star Citizen's combat model to MMOs in general, which isn't directly addressing the specific issue I raised about Star Citizen's combat model. You're comparing Star Citizen's combat model to other MMOs, suggesting that resource management is inherent in all MMOs. While resource management is indeed a common aspect of many MMOs in general, that doesn't automatically justify or explain the design choice CIG has made for SC's combat model. Your argument lacks any direct connection to the original issue that's being discussed here; it's a false analogy. But you know that, because the end of your counter argument is indicative of someone who is being intentionally disingenuous.
@@thedoctrinetv You're the one that are arguing the focus of resource management is what's keeping the flight model from being good. As such, I'm commenting on your stance and not making a new direct connection as you are saying. Fact is, SC, as an MMO has multiple facets to it, both flight model, and resource management, included. The flight model is a smaller part of the whole whereas the resource management takes up a bigger amount of resources to develop. Hence, your argument doesn't make sense. Not only because they aren't losing resources by putting due focus, but because the demands of the MMO neccesitates that they prioritize the resource mangement.
@@TheRedEyeChannel I appreciate your perspective on the broader context of Star Citizen as an MMO. However, my core issue with your last response lies in the fact that you're now denying the antecedent of your false analogy while STILL perpetuating your original false analogy. You continue to attempt to justify Star Citizen’s overly-resource-management-focused combat model by comparing it to other MMOs, suggesting that resource management is inherent in all MMOs. However, this continues to sidestep the specific concern raised here about Star Citizen’s combat mechanics. While resource management is essential, it shouldn’t overshadow the core gameplay experience. And that's the problem--the core first-person experience, which includes the combat model, is being overshadowed by resource management.
I personally will prefer a 6DF gameplay, it's more difficult to master, but more reallistic for a space game. The problem CIG is facing may be that 6DF game will atract less new players, as it's less intuitive and hard to learn.
Your perspective is interesting, as usual. Your comment about Multiplayer vs Solo Play, hit a nerve for me. I prefer a more PvE and Solo play style, with the odd time dipping into PvP and crewing up. To me, and I think other PvE / Solo players, MM feels punishing to us over PvP players. Systems being taken away in NAV mode is a terrible design choice. Weapons, fine, but shields is totally ridiculous. Simple scenario, I'm running one of these new cargo missions. PvP or Pirate players camp the OM's at mission destinations. I drop out of quantum, have no shields, and get shredded in seconds before I even have a chance to defend myself, or rabbit. Even in a ship like the C2, I am going to get trashed by a couple of light fighters in this scenario. That is punishing to any PvE or Solo, or even non combat players. The reality is that there are several non combat play loops in cargo, mining, and exploration. Punishing those players with a focus on combat is terrible. Don't bother with "get escorts", or "git gud", or whatever BS excuse. Cargo, mining and exploration are legitimate play loops being absolutely ruined by the constant push to combat and piracy. MM makes those difficult scenarios near impossible for the non combat players. I expect pirates and griefers are loving MM, since it makes it so easy to get players when they drop out of quantum now.
And what does your alternative look like? Always being able to QT away unscathed? How should the game allow you to properly defend from pirates solo if not crewing up with gunners or hiring escorts? And if you can escape so easily, what’s the point of piracy at all? But besides this, we tested this in my org for quite awhile. If the attackers don’t have a QED, our solo space truckers still escape every time in space, they tank damage and jump away seconds later. If they have a QED, then it’s no different than before MM. You’re toast if you’re solo. And in Atmosphere it’s the same thing. If you can’t QT you’re probably dead, but pirates are gonna want to take you in space not atmo. There’s less incentive for them if you fall to the ground and explode. Solos should still have risks right? I think it’d be better if they fix the trade system. You shouldn’t be buying X million in cargo with your own money. I mean you can, but if you get pirated you deserve the big loss that would entail if you did nothing to protect it. There should be hauling contracts you can take if you don’t want that risk. You get pirated and maybe your loss is some amount you put down for the contract and a hit to reputation. And then figuring out how to prevent players from cooperatively pirating.
I just hope they can look past Squadron 42 and let Star Citizen have it's original flight model back. But since Squadron 42 is in polishing state now and the ships are very much linked between these two games, i have high doubts they will do anything to change this sadly. Hope i'm wrong. Would love another interview with A1 and Yogi on this, bring on Splen as well from the racing side of things.
feel the same way. It looks like Yogi is gonna force MM to happen regardless it's becoming more and more apparent that it's never gonna work well. I wish they would just stop wasting all the time and resources on it. jmo though
Most of the developers are treating backers as some sort of "enemy" standing in the way of their "vision." Problem is this new vision they have doesn't match what they sold us.
I am not even a PvP-er and I dislike Master Modes. I feel like I have so much less freedom than I do now. It feels like they let one guy just do whatever he wanted and then just released it. Master Modes feels arbitrary, and the old one felt fine to me.
I totally agree with you A1. I've played about 5 years...at least every week. This current 'Try' is a grasp at equalizing the ships/players in the game. ALL ships DO NOT need to be viable against others. Use MM for quantum travel only...and maybe the top 10% of speed. You got this one stop on. Great job!
Current model (3.23) is the worst flight experience in this games history. Feels like Im flying a WW1 fighter that needs a tune up. Some of the aspects of MM are fine but need tweaks, shields shouldnt just drop when switched. In addition what is needed is to get away from relying solely on ship HP and introduce armor, a light fighter should never be able to take out a cap ship no matter how long it spends shooting it. I hope CiG is watching this they really need to get it together.
I think boost should be more of a special trump card rather than a constant thing, sort of like having a cooldown that can be used for an defensive or offensive clutch moment. I also think that fighters should be far faster than larger ships, but higher grade weapons should come with higher projectile velocity.
I gotta be honest: I'm really enjoying Master Modes. It does feel a lot more fleshed out than the other flight models. That is pure subjective opinion. And other opinions on this are absolutely valid as well, of course. Master modes definitely needs more balancing. Some ships needs their speeds adjusted (looking at you Hurricane), but overall, I like it much more than the 3.22 flightmodel. The previous flight model was hugely inaccesible for the common player. The player that wasnt able to train every day. The player who maybe had only an hour to themselves every day. Does that mean that MM values skill less than the 3.22 flightmodel? Maybe. I'm not sure on that. I do think the skill floor was a bit too high on the 3.22 model tho. Typical PvP fights in the verse way too often just evolved in jousting and passing each other at high speeds, firing for maybe a sec before being out of range again. With MM, it feels like a person has to commit to the fight. Certain ships are still able to effectively disengage, which is why the Bucc is so strong atm, but I think MM is a good idea overall - it just needs more work. The speed limitations are a good idea to bring dogfights closer together, it just needs more fine tuning. What type of tuning is needed exactly? Hell nah, dunno. I'm not a game designer. Edit: (I wrote the comment while watching before A1 adressed jousting) I see the point A1 is making to jousting in MM, but so far, it feels like there is a lot less jousting in MM so far. But granted, I'm not playing AC, only the PvP in the wild. I think increasing the SCM speed a bit would be a good thing. Let them cook
Typical PVP looked like that because nobody told people not to constantly hold W to get super fast and extremely linear. Now the SCM speed wall is preventing that for you. An hour a day could have gotten you far in the old flight model. You would have just needed a bit of guidance and that's mainly where the game failed.
old flight model was not that hard to master. YOu just needed to practice. JUst like Pilots in Real Life.... You cant just get in a plane and fly.... PIlot = STUDENT...... THis is the issue.... I have my Light sport aircraft endorsement. Took over 45 hours of training and flying and applying my self to learn to fly....> The issue is people do not want to put the work in to practice their Craft... No throttle managment , Hell CIG even added 2 new hand holding settings.... Precision landing mode, and Gravity Compensator .... MORE HAND HOLDING settings. taking even the basics risks of flying out of the hands of the pilot so you dont have to practice landings. or worry about up strafe if your in decoupled mode in a gravity well. DO you want to play a game where the basic risks of FLIGHT are not even risks anymore..... ?
@@FathersGame2-zi5wv SC, in the end, is still a game. Not real life. Not everybody has that kind of time just to learn how to fly a ship. A lot of people work, have families, etc. A lot of people have only an hour a day for themselves. Not everybody wants to spend that on training for a game.
@Jaeih then alot of people are going to have a cold awakening. It's going to take you a hour to load your cargo and get into space. SC has tons of time sinks. I'm a father of 2 girls. 4 and 6. A husband . People sc isn't a game that u can get anything done in a hour. Tired of the excuse of limited game time.
Maybe WWII plane shooters is more your thing than space? It's stupid to make space flight be like atmospheric flight because it's "more accessible". if people want "accessible" games, then go play an accessible game. Not a space flight combat game where you need to learn 6dof and all it entails.
Massively reducing maneuvering-thruster ability would be a good start. But the issue with your analysis is that we really don't want Expanse style gameplay. That's the opposite of close space combat. Galactica style gameplay is good, but the reason it works in the show is that the maneuvering thrusters have enough power to rotate the ship, NOT enough to strafe. That's what we should try with MM.... Turn down the strength on those maneuvering thrusters wasaaay down.. Keep speeds slow so combat is close and visually cool. Win win.
I like that with master modes you aren’t running with weapons and shields on all the time. If we can easily see what mode people are in, it’ll help show intent, which is important IMO. I DON’T like their implementation though. It’s just too nonsense. Especially the braking when you turn off boost.
You actually can't see what mode other people are in at all in 3.23. You can only see whether their shields are down, which can easily be achieved by pressing the O key in SCM Gun mode as well. I do like the mechanism in Elite Dangerous where you have to physically deploy your weapons. Anyone who has you targeted will get a audio warning when that happens
I played a game with 6DOF in 2001. There all this was already well established. Shiptypes were either jousters or circlers. The only limits were max speed and pretty similar manouvering thrusters. The best circlers are the more manouverable ships, and the slower a ship manouvers the heavier you force it into jousting. If CIG wants less jousting they need to make the ship much more agile.
To be fair jousting in the 3 degree only really happens at the inital merge. All the clips showing it were the start of the fight. Once engaged it almost never happens again. Its just in 6dof it happens again.... and again... and again.
That’s not true, if we joust on the first pass and I don’t like where my shields are at I boost or Nav away. Then turn and joust again and again. I see this all the time in AC. The only time you don’t joust is if both players want the duel. Due to MM jousting is more common and easier to do.
@@tcunero So in current MM it’s a lot more akin to 3DF if you want to maximize movement you do not use multi strife movements like we did in the last model a much more 6DF model. The game has 6DF in MM but the other thrusters do so little I don’t even use them, to maximize your movement you just focus on the 3DF In current MM. your statement was jousting only happens in 6DF not 3DF I’m saying that’s not true it still happens in 3DF I would argue more now.
@@scriptoris1947 Ahh so I think I see where the misunderstanding is. I was only referring to true 3df, and as you stated (and also stated in the video) MM is closer to 3df but definitely not 3df, it is a weird hybrid (i would say 4df). Real 3df, is what I was talking about and is what all modern atmospheric flight is. It is what I was referring when the vid shows all the examples of star wars flight, its based on 3df. If MM truly functioned like 3df you would never get the jousting (besides the first pass, like I stated).
Ok, 3.22 was a terrible flight model. With that flight model, you wouldn't get the mean group of players. If you have a game that caters only to hard core you will not have a game that lasts. I wish you would quit trying to cause a division in the community and have constructive feedback. Constantly saying that CIG is incompetent and the game sucks is not getting you anywhere and it's causing people to lose a ton of respect for you. You know where the game is going, the new flight model just came out and was rushed. They are working on it. WE DO NOT NEED MORE SPEED. things are going to break before they get better, and forcing them to do what you want is not what a lot of other people want. It's finally nice to struggle against NPC's and have to make choices on what to take to battle. The game now is way way way more positional than ever before. What needs balancing are all the weapons. This will come with time. They need to get all the features in then they can focus on balancing. Other wise what they do now can break the game later. So let them do their job and wait till it is all in, then give constructive criticism. Don't be salty. I've been playing the game since 2013, and I too have gone through all the iterations. 3.23 feels the best and it will only get better.
Hi Avenger. I just wanted to give you kudos for 99% of what you said in your video and I absolutely agree. BUT! You lost me when you said Star Citizen should cater more to multiplayer than to singleplayer. If you remember the planned NPC to player ratio of 9 to 1, then Star Citizen will literally be a PvEvP MMO, and historically the majority of the overall playerbase is playing MMOs solo for the majority of the time, just because you cannot always assemble a large enough group that has the time at the same time or wants to do the same things at the same time. So, in my opinion the most important step is to make the game a fun solo playable experience, and if that works well, THEN make it playable multiplayer. Otherwise SC will end up being a niche game for only enthusiasts, and nothing for people who have a day job other than making videos about games. No offense - as I said I agree with 99% of what you said and Kudos for the research you did. Awesome video!
Them trying to cater to both 3DOF and 6DOF is representative of the game in general - trying to include everything / cater to everyone which ultimately results in a poorer experience for all
As he touched on at the end they can have their cake and eat it too. In atmo combat is perfect for 3DOF, lean into that and develop around it. Space needs to be tuned more like 3.22 with the best parts off MM added in Then there is REAL separation between ships and player skills, you could be an Ace in atmo with a Raven but outclassed if the fight is pulled into space
From their trailers, the way ships are designed and the way the devs talk, I think CIG's vision about what combat in Star Citizen should be like has always been 3 DOF. Problem is, during the original Kickstarter campaign they promised 6 DOF, and I think they did that without fully realizing the implications. The original Kickstarter campaign in general was filled with wildly unrealistic things and promises, so I don't think Chris Roberts or whoever was responsible for it really thought it through. So now CIG is basically stuck trying to realize their 3 DOF vision without breaking their 6 DOF promise. Personally, I think CIG should just have the courage to stand up and admit that 6 DOF isn't working out for them and admit that they overpromised. Making a good 6 DOF game is difficult, and making one that is both fun and accessible to new and casual players, and that feels cinematic on top of that feels extremely difficult if not impossible. Like there is no way you are ever going to make a fast-paced Star Wars-style chase combat happen in 6 DOF. Losing 6 DOF is imho only a small price to pay if we get an actually good, cinematic flight model in return. Do you lose some depth? Perhaps. But as a veteran of IL-2 Sturmovik I can say that there can be a ton of depth in a 3 DOF game as well. Alternatively, they could abandon their vision of Star Wars-style combat and fully lean into the 6 DOF. Having played a lot of 6 DOF space sims (primarily the X Series and Elite), I am not sure if 6 DOF is really more unique than 3 DOF, but I do fully agree that having 6 DOF feels a lot more 'immersive' in a space sim. However, fully embracing 6 DOF would probably require a lot of reworks to some ships (because let's face it, a lot of ships have turret, weapon and cockpit/bridge placements that make no sense in 6 DOF) and it would make the combat (especially PvP) a lot less accessible to new players since 6 DOF dogfighting is a lot more complex to learn than 3 DOF dogfighting, so you'd always get this massive skill gap between older, more experienced players and new players that discourages most new players from even trying to learn the system. Either way, I hope CIG cuts their losses and just chooses one system or the other. Because I agree that with the current approach, it is just going to be really hard to make a flight model that is really good and satisfying.
I've listened to your position on MMs many times now and I always find myself disagreeing with you. Your reasoning always seems to come down to that you just want to go fast again. For example. You explain the difference between 3dof and 6dof and say that what we have now is in fact 6dof but it's "fake" or "isn't impactful" because you can't do anything with it and then explain that you can't move in all 6 dimensions fast enough to dodge projectiles due to your speed. Why is that a problem? The issue we had before was that speeds were as high as the skill ceiling, which is to say, so damned high that when at or close to skill cap no one could hit you. I believe that no matter how well you dodge it should be possible to hit you and I believe the side effect of that being that certain ships won't be viable or will have a disadvantage against certain other ships isn't a problem. Remember this isn't a free for all pvp experience which is where your biased opinion seems to come from. You can argue that your interceptors can control the battlefield all you want but that doesn't mean anything when the battlefield will realistically be centered around an objective (cargo ship for example) and the fact you need to make money. If you sit heavy fighters around an objective with that type of mindset the interceptors lose every day. You can run away all you want but that's a win to the defending party. Ironically it actually feels like to me that you are the one wanting an arcade experience rather than a sim. In a real sim people aren't just going 6v6 against each other just for the fun of it and I don't think the game should be balanced around that idea.
What do you mean why is that a problem? It either comes down to speed or agility. In the current mode you have neither. You’re not fast enough to do anything, you’re not agile enough to dodge, which prevents any uniqueness and will make combat stale. Even with 3 DoF, you can sacrifice speed to maintain agility or give up agility and use speed but that’s not possible. If this is the case it comes down to tankiness and dps which is again some stupid minmaxing crap and that’s horrendous. I’m appalled at your suggestion.
@@sydd6435 Then you need to get over yourself. The skill ceiling shouldn't be so high that you can't ever hit your target. The fact you are appalled at the mere suggestion that you shouldn't be able to speaks volumes about your character and to the fact that you prefer the games mechanics to serve your ego rather than the actual gameplay.
We can still have *some* nose-to-tail chasing in a 6DOF flight model. It can be setup to create that organically, where sometimes the right choice is to extend rather than continue to try to stay nose-to-nose and go toe-to-toe, leading to a chase. You can see this sort of behavior in Subspace, where ships have ridiculously high rates of turn, in excess of 120 degrees/sec. Even then, oftentimes the right decision is to beam the bandit and counter maneuver or attempt to blow through, instead of trying to pivot to face them, because by the time you do, you're already on the losing end of a trade and you'll die.
I do not enjoy shooting at pixels whatsoever. 3.23 was a step in the right direction for me. Seeing what I'm shooting at and being able to target specific points on the ship is engaging.
I think the point is that when you are getting shot at, close up or far away, and can't do anything about it because you have no lateral strafe or speed isn't "fun". Yeah, maybe your PVE missions are more cinematic but the actual combat gameplay has suffered.
I came back after 6months off and It felt like a massive down grade to flight. We need high skill ceiling, it keeps us striving to do better. Really hope they stay true to 6DOF or I wont be spending more money on the game :(
I don't agree. Content is what keeps people playing and if you get better at mechanics you are enticed to comeback and improve your skills. There are plenty of random and accessible games coming out every year. SC should not put itself in that category, else it will be spanked very badly.
Was the flight model too hard before Master Modes? I swear more noobs are having trouble with figuring out Master Modes than they did with the “press W to go faster”, simple model of pre-3.23.
@@LeftJoystick well this as we all know is just the base of the system, we dont have the full system yet, so it could be much better later on. And yes just W was boring.
I still remember how fun and joyous and snappy the flight model felt in the early days of Hangar Modules, where only AC existed. There was something about it that just felt incredible. And I think it's also because 6 DOF was incredibly more prevalent then than now. It stood out by how unique it felt, ships felt responsive and more appropriate to fly. I'm not saying it was necessarily better or that we should just go back to it because I'm absolutely sure that system also had its flaws that I am not seeing through my rose tinted glasses, but every time I play my mind races to think back to those early days and I feel like some of the magic was lost. I don't dislike what we have now either, but I feel it often fights you more than gives you a nice senese of space movement.
on the other hand, I don't think modern networking and netcode can really send and receive that kind of packets and data that this would entail to a bunch of people in a big fight
@@eavdmeer Realistically smart people want full Newtonian physics just to land on a rock with terrapin, take popcorn and have fun how every noob is crashing into station because they can't control their speed, hell yea that would be the best game ever, and there was only one game made with full Newtonian physics and was called Babylon5, you could go speed so fast without knowing what you died cause you crashed the asterodi and if you wanted fight you had to slow down, daaa logic, but only smart would survive, stupid would die and crash the ship I support such an a skill
@@yashik to be fair: people had no problems whatsoever crashing in to all sorts of things in 3.22. Every single noob would aim for the station at 1000 m/s, alias Mach 3 and then be surprised they couldn't stop in time. Don't forget the Frontier game, the predecessor of Elite Dangerous. It had full Newtonian physics and you could even accelerate time. It was really not great to play, so physics within reason is probably the better approach
I love that you zeroed in on that clip where they were talking about trying to avoid jousting. When I saw that originally I was like.. did he just say the point was to AVOID jousting?!? The good news is that CIG will ABSOLUTELY keep working on this and make changes until they get "there". I truly believe that and I am so grateful for people like A1 who highlight what is NOT working in a respectable way so that we can all get there together. I ask CIG to please lean into the 6 degrees of freedom unique realism that will set this amazing universe apart from anything else (as A1 says in this video).
Thank you for putting so much work into summarizing all of these issues. The situation of only being able to make meaningful maneuvers while boosting is what I noticed immediately in this newest model. It changed what used to be a flying game into what feels like a 6DOF FPS, and the boost gauge is now your stamina bar, which you have to use to be able to dodge. And _thank you_ for pointing out that all this did was make jousting worse. They removed so much energy, all we're doing now is jousting in slow motion.
If they would change the Master Modes to be Atmo and Space modes I feel like they would make a “never seen before” game. The ship could put more power into the thrusters for 6 DOF in space mode and then focus on a 3 DOF flight model when in atmo mode. This way you change the clunky feel of Master Modes now and also make a game people enjoy. Then they’d just have to focus on giving people reason to fight in one or the other.
![A MESSAGE TO CHRIS, ON COMBAT [STAR CITIZEN MASTER MODES]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SNm8RaKHLHg/mqdefault.jpg)
The crazy part of all of this is that Star Citizen has everything they need to do BOTH 3 and 6 degrees very well! We have planets with atmosphere! We could do faster 3 degree dog fights in atmo and a full 6 degrees in space! It's all there! We could literally have it all!
This, they just have to get speeds, flight surfaces and in atmo/gravity all to a good place.
Was about to type this exact same thing!
Was typing out the same thing, we need this
Yeah that's a great idea! Make atmosphere combat different and keep space fast paced and intense
💯
Average Pilot here, and in the previous flight mode i were getting demomolished but a knew why and started getting better, understanding what a merge is and not just joust boosting. I were getting better and it felt great and very rewarding. I went from using biggest pew pew ships thinking arrow were overrated to the being able to make an arrow move and preferring them. MM is a litteral stat match between ships and feels horrible no matter what you do.
The problem is in any engagement the Arrow should not win against a ship heavier than itself. It should be blown out of the sky 10/10 times. An Arrow/Gladius/Merlin/Merai pilot should have no chance against a Hornet/Scorp/F8 user, but they were beating those ships because of how quickly they were to snap their noses even if the pilot was of equal skill. MM fixes and corrects this imbalance putting those ships in their proper flight category.
@@grygaming5519 Lets be hounest...there is just one category. Most dps and shields win, speed means nothing. I will like to see this being balanced....meta is bucca and Mk2 because why.....dps and shields/hp .The triangle has been eleminated. At some point we will see the pay to win shouts start to come out. Im concierge, so ill just use my big ass ships and make more friends. But is this good for the game? im gonna say it straight, bad pilots like MM cause its the "i can win" setting.
@@grygaming5519 Yeah and thats utterly wrong imho. MM ruined alot. Small agile ships should have an easy time staying behind ships beyond their class ( upwards in size and punch power ).
I think shields should ALWAYS regen, slower than they naturally do when fired at, but always regen. So that the DPS of an arrow for example would never get through a shield more than 1 class beyond its own class, thus not beeing able to punch against size 3. Only size 1 and 2.
@@grygaming5519 There are numerous ways to make Light Fighters ineffective against large ships. Such as, Increase weapon ranges based on weapon sizes compared to the every weapon is 1500m of 3.22, allow for active shield generation (which had existed at one point and was removed, which lead immediately to the fighter meta), map ship agility to the triangle as well as weapon capacitor, and shield regen rate.
@@RoxxSerm I agree with this. A small ship with a good pilot should be a pain in the ass, and if it taakes on a heavy fighter it should be able to kill it eventualy but it should take some time to get through the shields and the pilot should would need to be able to avoid the occasional shots that the heavier ship fires once in a while. Yes, with the correct moves the heavier ship will have a small opportunity to shoot at the annoying musqito.
6DF should be the focus. I completely agree.
It makes more sense to me to do 6DF and treat the players like adults. Not everybody will be Top Gun, but overall you don't have to be to have fun, learn something, and get a little better (I'm my own example). I'm not a combat centered player. My big space-sim thing is space-to-foot, resource gathering, and evasive combat (smuggling, infiltration, data-running). I wish they'd talk about flight mechanics (or anything) in terms of actual analysis.
personally i think they should give 2 DF a chance , im sure they can handle that if they really try in 2 to 3 decades.
I can't even get excited enough to load the game right now, after playing a few hours of the new model.
Jousting was an issue though. Tricording was tiresome. It made fights boil down to who was more maneuverable regardless of ship class and large-scale ship combat being reduced to a cloud of 1v1 fights. It also catered heavily to light fighters, ignoring how heavy fighters, gunships and sub-capital ships (Hammerhead is a fantastic example of this) should be able to function against their supposed targets. Previously, light fighters like the Gladius would just tricord, circle around, and punish the maneuverability difference. Bringing out a crewed Hammerhead, this ship that is supposed to be a HARD counter to light fighters, was a fruitless and frustrating endeavor.
While MM needs a lot of tuning, so did the previous flight model and it took a ton of work and time to get to a semi-usable state. MM allows non-combat focused ships the time and the opportunity to make meaningful decisions against aggressors; does a crewed Constellation Taurus or Caterpillar stand and fight 2-3 fighters, or run? Will my shields and firepower holdout against those fighters? Same goes for asymmetric fights. Should 3 light fighters engage 2 heavy fighters or 2 gunships?
I get the frustration, I've seen this happen for every change to the flight model and in the end, only 1 of them was truly terrible. This model is still new and has had only small changes to how it works. As with everything this project does: take a step back and breathe. Play something else for a bit. Have a modicum of faith that the folks working on the MM/flight model have developing a fun challenge for everyone in mind.
You're gonna be fighting against the desires of Chris Roberts and his love of WW2 in Space. Good luck with that.
"Jousting" is the byproduct of inexperience and cannot be eliminated from the game. It will always exist until players stick around long enough to learn the flight model, which cannot happen until a flight model sticks around. Also, lowering the skill ceiling doesn't eliminate inexperience. It just lowers the reward for practicing and getting good.
Exactly, jousting is normal. Only way to remove jousting is to remove the ability to move.
A little detail in the Expanse a lot of people miss that shows just how much attention they paid to Newtonian physics- look at the PDTs in the clips you showed. When you see a close-up, look at the back of the turret. There is a small jet of flame coming out of the rear as they fire. That's a small counter-thruster designed to compensate for the thrust caused by the projectiles going out the other end to keep from throwing the ship's maneuvering out of whack. THAT is serious attention to how space combat works. CIG going with the Airplanes In Space trope is a let-down after what they've done so far, and I would hope they can take some cues from The Expanse, Battlestar Galactica, and Babylon 5 as to how flight in space should be done.
Been playing SC for 3+ years and consider myself a casual player, not particularly focused on combat. And haven’t been too concerned with MM changes. But this resonates. Previously I felt that I was learning how to *fly* in 6dof. Now, I feel I have to learn “MasterModes”, which is just a game mechanic, and not “flying”
You are not flying either in 3.22, lol.
@@lss247 It felt a hell of a lot more like flying is the point they were making. How can you be so willfully ignorant to the extent that you attempt to mischaracterize someone else's comments/feelings on pre/post MM.
@@Levnyan ok lunatic. Follow your master.
In my head I always figured if you were fighting in the atmosphere of any planet it would be more 3 dof and space combat can be more 6 dof but what do I know
That would make sense. Ship aerodynamics and ailerons should have much more impacts in atmospheric flights than thrusters meant for space.
@@alexb115yeah, I'm still hoping aerodynamic surfaces and thruster overheating mechanics will come into play before 4.0
I believe the 2.63 flight model was the best. Effective combat range was close and the speed was high with six degrees of freedom. What limited your change of direction was simply G forces. Vastly more fun than anything since
Completely agree. The solution to getting 'chase' is to keep forward thrust substantially more powerful than any other thruster inputs (which is also necessary for 'control surface' behavior in atmo) and to make G force effects more closely approximate real life - e.g. the body tolerates negative Gs better than positive Gs. That way roll and pitch still become the dominant, but not exclusive, maneuvers.
I didn't experience that but I agree that if they would keep 6 DOF but shrink the effective combat zone, it would be a better solution than just going 3 DOF mode or MM as is.
Who do you think complained about the 2.63 flight model. The guy in the video complained about MM, because the speed was too limited and Medium and Heavies were just blowing light fighters out of the sky. A MK1 Hornet could out turn and out gun a Gladius in 2.63 just on how to hold and bleed your speed to not black out, while maintaining high energy to strafe. Then you also add on that in 2.63 the Missiles didnt hit like a wet noodle. A1 is just crying over how lights got kneecapped, flight is becoming more accessible thus cutting into those flight school dollars. We're also at version 1 of MM, so once Armor v1 and shields v1 comes online with Maelstrom. Lights are going to get slapped with a nerf bat and we'll probably see more adjustments and refinements with MM.
All it is is complaining because it puts everyone back at square one and PVP babies cannot have that.
@@grygaming5519 I don't disagree with you. I was just pointing out that I have not enjoyed PVP in any iteration as much as back in 2.63. The guy who developed that flight model and was working to improve it was let go, or left on his own accord I'm not sure. He was on to something which could have been improved over all of this time, but we keep throwing out the old model and reinventing the wheel. Lots of confusion as to where we should go. I am hopeful we will improve master modes and get to something everyone can enjoy but still has enough depth.
Croberts wants Star Wars style, "WW2 Dogfights in Space". This is very clear in all of their cinematic ads. You don't see 6DOF strafing in any of them, you see Top Gun chases.
Except, the engine doesn't work that way. A1's contrast of SW and BSG is dead on the money there.
If they want BSG, they need to *drastically* reduce the acceleration of thrusters compared to the main engines. If they want Star Wars, they need to abandon the idea that this is a space sim.
They can't have both. They have to choose.
6DOF is the way lets get back to 1.3 tunings and leave maincentric to atmosphere where it belongs. CIG doesn't need to choose because there is already place for each.
exactly, recognize there's a different between space and atmo dogfight, and that will only bring variety into fighter ship meta
I still think that the main engines would let you accelerate faster forward, especially if its a ship designed to be flown around in atmo, as well as the larger capital ships needing their large main thrusters to get a lot of acceleration going. Ofc the manuvering thrusters will work in space too, but i think you get what im saying. Maybe with engineering and overheating your manuvering thrusters by firing them for too long will change that. Especially since its harder to disperse heat in space the smaller the object (fighters and their tiny manuvering thrusters)
@@mhmm4840 yeah there should be a distinction between atmo-specified ship and space specified ship. He mentioned that in later part of the vid
@@mhmm4840 Yes although some ships have comparable retro thrusters and some ships like Xian have no mains or their mains are mavs
Echoing what others have said: it's absurd to think thrusters should have acceleration comparable to the main engines. That's like saying the RCS on the Space Shuttle should have similar thrust to the mains, which is nonsense.
There are BSG mods for Freespace 2, such as Diaspora, that have successfully delivered the kind of 6DOF movement that A1 is talking about, and they do it by being exactly the "maincentric" thing you're suggesting is something to be avoided. Just my two cents.
If you disagree, that's fine, but if that's the case I'd invite you to look at the size of the main engines on any Star Citizen ship compared to the thrusters. It should be pretty obvious where the majority of maneuvering power should be coming from.
100% agreement that the model should be 6dof in space and much more 3dof in atmosphere - one of the most fun parts about flying in atmosphere used to be using either pitch or 45 depending on your ships speed and ability to handle in atmosphere at different points of the engagement
I pledged into a 6DOF game, Hopefully they can deliver. Watching those .22 fights made me remember how good they were! 💔
When I pledged it was for a spiritual successor to wing commander with drop-in drop-out campaign co-op plus dedicated servers and mod support. They kept selling the modding manual until October 2023 but don't really want to talk about that anymore. As for the rest, they don't seem to feel like delivering the co-op campaign anymore. Meanwhile the worst part is the apologists who hide behind the 2013 vote to say it's OK that they are a decade late. Meanwhile in reality that vote stated clearly in the premise that it would lead to more being developed at a higher quality level AND done faster. I'm glad I stopped giving them money in 2014 when they skipped their stated release target - I'll let other people give them 250 thousand USD a day to not deliver.
Meh. I found the exact clips super boring tbh, like good flightwise but the ttk was waaaaayy too high
@@17trunX yeah I understand ttk but that's an easy tuning change. The flight style was WAY better, positional changes and advantages we're on point in .22. .23 will screw average pilots over more than before because now you can't run away with momentum
@@RN1441 I get that, but it's never been a 3DOF game though right? The rest has always been in the air with SC. Many ups and downs and will probably continue to be that way.
endless jousting was so fun because most new players didn't know how to control the ship properly.. i loved it so much
6 dof is the only direction a space sim belongs
said it before, I'll say it again. They should have experimented with interdiction ship items to slow ships down and jam QT that most if not all combat ships could equip, just like a weapon slot (or a medium slot if you play eve online). They could have experimented with the power triangle, making it take time to move, making it require 100% engines to QT. Etc. Instead we have a frankenstein mess that makes no sense
Yes this, lots of players were saying they should try things like this. "Crowd control" mechanisms, guns that slow ships down, maybe a hacking thing... yes
6DF without question, I'm going to regret having ever pledged for this game (since 2013) if they pursue 3DF. Great breakdown all round. I hope CIG sees this.
I'm newer to this game and found this super interesting, "Appealing To Everyone Means You Appeal To No One", I hope this game leans into what it is instead of something super dumbed down, I want the in depth systems to learn
Shame that appealing to as many people as you can is kind of important when making a succesfull MMO title...
@@igorpniak8308 I think more people just need to get into more in depth games, I think most of the appeal for this game will come from just completing features, meaningful gameplay loops, and ironing out bugs along with all the other incredible stuff they want to achieve, like shroud played this game and he did not have a good time with it, not because he's a casual but because there's not enough of a working game in the areas he wants yet
@Exccentrik You are very much overestimating how people work. Just look at any MMO that has stable and sizable playbase, and it's capable of sustaining it's reoccurring costs, a thing Star Citizen will need to achive to not die out like many, many lesser known or forgotten titles. There are three like that currently, World of Warcraft, ESO, and FFXIV. All of them are very simple at it's core, approachable, with relatively flat skill curves, a lot of engaging content, and a huge amount of QoL features. Those are things that SC lacks, even in its yet unfulfilled designs. Even a game like New World is like that, while not being as successful as the aforementioned trio. People really overlook the realities of MMO games. Sure, deep, engaging workign game is great for a single-player title. What works for 100h doesn't necessarily work for a few hundreds if not thousands of hours, for many people at once. And the thing is, every MMO lives of casuals. They are the biggest part of the population. Their financial backing contributes the most. Not a small number of whales. So even a MMO game that you described, with complete features, meningfull gameplay loops, a ton of content, and great gameplay will not be successful if it can't attract enough casual players to sustain itself. And SC isn't casual friendly game in reality nor in desing. So it will struggle with this, unless it will go more casual route, which already happens with Master modes, respawn changes, or rework of FPS experience. So yeah, "Appealing to Everyone means you appeal to no one" will not work for SC.
Another phrasing is that 'if you don't pick your specific targets, you won't hit any of them'. Star Citizen has done something similar in that when it's time to sell something they swear the game is going to be 'the best at _____ ever with no compromises' yet here nearly 12 years in to development (14 if we count the pre-production) it's clear that they never had a guiding vision beyond 'sell more features'. We don't have any information on how the parts of the game are meant to interact, not even a flight model nailed down for what's supposed to be a game with a heavy space combat focus.
@@igorpniak8308 you said a very important thing, a key aspect of MMO. CONTENT!
Where is the content in SC? We are mostly getting mechanics, the flight model is a Mechanic and has nothing to do with content.
To give you an example, RAID mechanics in Destiny are very difficult, surely not accessible for everyone, but the CONTENT is also there hence the game is still alive and has many fans.
You have done a wondeful job of eloquently giving clear explanation for what I've been feeling but struggling to explain.
Actual combat and pvp aside, the whole flight model change has ripped the fun and frenetic feel out of flying and has all but completely neutered decoupled flight.
Ever taken a shit where it stops halfway? Then you take a big breath, struggle and double down trying to squeeze it out. Only to have it break off with the other half still inside you and be left red faced, gasping for air and back to square one. That's s.c development....
No and you should change how you poop, you are definitely going to get hemorrhoids and maybe even cause a prolapse.
@@Arkrilok So you're implying CIG development methodology is like hemorrhoids? Agreed.
In the words of Ron Swanson, "Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing."
100% agree. The artificial limitation of boost is extremely frustrating to have to learn. And call me crazy, but I liked where they were going with hover-mode, where ships couldn't just float in gravity by the strength of their weakest thrusters.
That hover mechanic is coming again. Ships without vtol will see limited hover ability in gravity due to thrusters overheating or something like that.
I was lucky enough to start playing at the end of 3.22 (a couple months before 3.23) and tbh I’d be upset if they continued with 3DOF. I loved how flight worked in 3.22.
I sucked really bad at first, but once I got hours in and was able to fly, it felt so rewarding. I don’t get that feeling with master modes
My ass
The flight system of 3.22 had filled the game with runners who fled at such high speeds that they were impossible to catch, regenerated their shields, then came back to fight, again and again, and again... Then they would flee in QT as soon as they lost the advantage, often in their big ships meant for multicrew but flown solo. Missile spam was extremely common, and whether or not you could flare them was highly dependent on the servers. The so-called skilled mechanic of "experienced" pilots was just a noob-killing tactic not intended by CIG, which involved disabling the gimbal of all weapons by pressing three keys at the same time to activate the space handspinner gameplay. And that's less than 10% of the problems that existed.
It was better? BIG LOL
I'm more frustrated by the atmospheric flight model built in to some of the newer ships like the F7c/a MK2 and Firebird. You try to pull a high g turn in pitch and the ship tries to fight you, often lurching in the opposite direction. it makes no sense at all. Fighting in Microtech atmosphere is just awful. you need to reduce your speed to about 60% of scm to get a smooth bank turn, even when rolling into pitch first.
The fact the other ships don't have the same issue makes it much much worse.
I 100% agree with this. I have heard that it's due to atmospheric flight being implemented on some ships but others have not had it implemented yet. Hopefully they will get implemented soon because the F7A is atrocious in atmo compared to many other ships.
Man I thought that was the server bugging out it was turning so hard opposite of me. I guess now I know
Was doing some LRTs with friend yesterday and I remember hearing A1 and Subliminal discuss how bad the avenger titan was in atmo. Man, trying to do a pitch up, nose to target was horrendous. The ship is fighting against you, and it probs didn’t help that I was in coupled mode. When I decoupled it was a bit more manageable but jeez it was a nightmare
Not if you fly in pitch and don’t over do the acceleration when turning. Of course if you try and fly like in space you will screw up lol. If you start trying to turn in yaw and have too high energy you will wobble but that’s normal for atmosphere. Adjust your flying
I’m sure this will get ironed out.
Star Cit was the most challenging combat flight system I've ever encountered in 3.22, it was completely humbling fighting someone who had practiced 6 DOF. I'd like to see 6 DOF become the focus.
The previous flight model was fundamentally broken at it's core and easily exploitable.
6DOF never disappeared, I don't even understand where this BS claim comes from....
Elite Dangerous had a better flight model 3.22 and prior.
It doesn't matter... the game was still years and years away from being finished. What you played was never ever going to be the thing.
6DOF never disappeared. All ship have 6 degrees Of Freedom movement in Master Mode system.... I don't even understand where that "6DOF" argument comes from in the vid.
I must be stupid, but to me, "raise SCM speed so that 6DOF comes back" comes, physically and mathematically, out of nowhere. It makes no sense to me.
"boost lateral speeds", "lower projectile speed" (because it's an issue of target speed/projectile speed ratio, after all), these kind of pleas, yup, I'd get them, in relation to 6DOF. But "boost SCM speed" ?? I'm like, "what?" oO
I wanted the sim exp. I’m ok with having a simple mode for SQ42 but I feel like the arcade style is a loss for SC.
i don't know how they can release SQ42 with flight sucking. That should have been their focus from day 1. It blows my mind.
@@randomly-genrated Master Mode is not that bad for a single player game such as SQ42.
If you got in Pirates Swarm and dogfight the enemy fighters, it's kind of OK.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't like MM. But I think they can release SQ42 with MM.
People need to stop calling this a sim when the lasers just act like slow machine gun bullets without ammo instead of the reality of them being hitscan light speed weapons.
@@dimman77 I think you should re-evaluate why you think any games a sim if you think that's what sets the difference bro
@@Flatfootsy Getting proper realistic, easily achieved, physics on one of your "simulator's" primary weapon types is something you would think would be important to a "simulation". Lol
I've got faith they'll sort the system out, especially with high quality feedback like this.
As long as we don't have to deal with actual orbital mechanics. I don't want to manage orbital vectors in the middle of a dogfight
XvT and XWA as well as freelancer were a huge part of my childhood. Thank you for acknowledging them as the foundations
Someone get this man into the flight, combat design team now!!
Ever since 3.23 my play time has slowly dwindled to not playing at all due to how awful flight feels. Ive said it on spectrum, ive said it in comments, i simply do not enjoy flying anymore regardless of combat or not
Same
Same
true
Same
Yep
SC has always had this kind of identity crisis and not just in this area. On one hand they are obsessed with 'immersion' down to little nuts and bolts but at the same nothing really destroys immersion more than multiplayer and PVP, which they want. Well, which is it? Gimbles and m/k to point and shoot or flight stick and maneuver? So many areas and its clear they are like a monkey with its fist stuck in a jar. They desperately want the shiney inside, but they see the hunter walking up to them. All they have to do is let go, but they can't because they are obsessed with having it both ways.
Epic video. The amount of contextualisation you put into this is S-tier.
Yeah, he really nailed this one. Not just with explanations, but the direct quotes from Chris and others.
Here's a take from someone who primarily plays PvE. Stick with me here, cause I get the feeling people are gonna assume a lot based on that:
I like the idea of MM, and finally associating ship roles and keeping things in their lane, so we don't have these situations where ships are bodying ships that should be more maneuverable, or tankier. But there's more issues with it than pros I can find. I suck at PvP, but I felt like I was actually DOING something to not die in the PU, in the old flight model. And there were times I survived in WEIRD ships because I was so focused on getting into Grim with what I had that I'd use every capacity my ship had to survive. But mostly, flying felt *good*. It felt intuitive, it felt fun, it felt like something that - if I put the time in - I could eventually get to a point where I could go toe-to-toe instead of run, in less meta-y ships.
I don't feel that now. Atmospheric flight feels like hell, and doesn't make me feel like I'm flying a ship with insane amounts of thrust on every surface of it, but a prop plane. It feels like I'm playing War Thunder. Space flight feels so touch and go - Where-as I used to be able to fly over the wrong end of a hangar, decouple, burn to change heading, coast into a hangar, slam the afterburner in reverse to arrest momentum, and touch down in one smooth motion? Now, even with turning off the landing gear assist, it feels like a clunky mess setting down in a hangar. No longer can I feel like a competent pilot, I instead feel like someone letting the clutch go too soon in a manual transmission car. And if I want to try to speed up my approach instead of slowing to a crawl, swapping modes, etc? Acceleration is so insane now that you'll just pancake into the flight control room. It feels so backwards. Nothing feels "right". Everything feels like it has training wheels on it you can't take off, inherently.
And again - I don't understand stuff like tricording, I can't put up a fight in anything less than a Hornet Ghost, I can't outmaneuver folks who understand the actual flight system like they breathe and eat it. I just knew how *my* ships worked, how they moved, and how to utilize that to do what I want. Even taking the time with each of my ships the past few weeks, nothing feels right. It all feels awkward and unwieldy, and both combat and travel feel like an utter mess to me. That's as a PvE player, so I can only assume how frustrated PvP players must be with the changes.
Right now, it doesn't feel fun, anymore. I don't enjoy taking my ships out anymore, I don't enjoy trying to escape in a dangerous situation, I don't feel like my ships feel like ships anymore. And to top it off - I've been backed since 2012, but only started ACTUALLY playing in December. I've got less than a year of experience in the game, a few hours each week, so this change should have meshed better with me and newer players than anyone else. Instead, I just feel underwhelmed and limited in expressing the capacity of what the ship I worked for/own can do.
As an afterward - I also wonder how much of this is cycling in folks who don't get why things changed over the years from SQ42, or are newer to the team and trying to reinvent the wheel. Like you said - I've watched development while I couldn't play due to having a shit PC for YEARS. I've seen the complaints about previous flight models, I've seen them go through iterations, I've seen that feedback pour in, and I've seen them all come close to being "almost there" according to the community, just to get trashed to try something new. It seems to be a problem with a lot of systems in the game, not just the flight model. We see development and refinement, and then things will just stagnate and get replaced.
With MM and "WW2" in space meta, pvp is will become something to avoid all together. It's not rewarding, it's not fun, and it's not worth the effort, time and energy. All this because it's just becoming a bland, run off the mill arcade spaceshooter.
Hope it will be fixed.
All this tech to play around with must result in something great in the end.
I think CIG first step in making it great, is to get the barebones into the game and runnable as it is right now. Changes must be done afterward when the tech is validated trough usage.
one thing you hear over and over and over is "WW2 dogfights in space". And I think this video touches on it, but WW2 dogfights didn't have 6 DOF. It's an impossible thing to aim for. I really wish CIG would just embrace 6 DOF so we had BSG style combat.
If I wanted WW2 dogfights I'd just go back to IL-2
I think the community is arguing against WW2 combat in space. I think that was a vision of CIG's or a vision attributed to CIG.
@@alexrod3505 they want "heavy fighters" too, literally the worst kind of planes to ever be conceived at the dawn of ww2 and they all failed miserably and were (literally) wiped out during the battle of Britain 😂
Which is exactly what I have said for years. But white knights told me to stfu and just trust CIG and their developers. This has never been done before and bla bla.
i dont get it, you still have decoupled mode and up/down and side thrusters, you can easily rotate around a ship that you are attacking while drifting in its flight direction. That is far from WWII Airplanes... I think most of you guys are just complaining, because you need to reevaluate your tactics and previous meta doesnt work anymore. I love the new flight model and prefer it over any flight model that was in place before.
Absolutely fantastic and well-articulated breakdown of the issues and their potential solutions. CIG's handling of flight physics is going to make or break the game as a project, and the time for them to dial things in is rapidly dwindling. Here's to hoping they take the community's good advice and make decent choices.
As always A1, though I can't say that I understand or agree with all of your points, your presentation, dedication, and passion for SC is much appreciated. Like many as I was initially excited for MM, but the more opinions I read, the more I play, the less I'm enjoying it. As you point out, it's a flight model made for SQ42 first, and that's becoming more and more apparent. SC needs a different solution, and I hope that the devs get a chance to realize that solution. Unfortunately, they may not get a chance to revisit the flight model until after SQ42 releases.
See, I love this kind of response, you are respectful, kind and still get your point across. I wish more people disagreed with my points like you do. God Bless
I hope they do make it balanced because most ships have the capacity to 6dof even the freighters but alas.. it's not to late for them to fix and clean up the mm scene.Great vid btw @@Avenger__One
I wasn't your fan due your focus on pvp and not much else BUT this time you hit nail on the head! 100% agree! and you managed to add perfect visual representation of fly models you are talking about. Fantastic work! Love it! Maybe I would use different video from the expanse.. probably attack on station with stealth ship but that not important. Great, great work. Thank you.
I am personally in SC because I wanna play space game... not nonsense with planes in space.. I'm here for things that makes space true space and for feeling that I am in the space in my ship.. no feeling that I am in air in my plane. For that I would go for different game.
Agree 100%. Sad reality.
I would love to see something like battlestar galactica!
Great video as usual.
You said something interesting. We have space and we have planets. We can do both. CIG can have their cake and eat it too. 3 dof in atmosphere, 6 dof without. Different ships are more useful in different scenarios. Nothing really does that.
I vote for 6 degrees of freedom, if I wanted 3 degrees, I would play sw squadrons or warthunder
I literally switched to playing DCS since MM as I just don’t feel the depth and freedom of choices I felt when flying with the old fly model - and I never played DCS before, I just like the fact that you actually feel like you are learning to fly a complex piece of high tech. MM killed that feeling for me in SC. Wasn’t even an actual decision I made, I just don’t feel like playing it anymore since 3.23.
So many people would say "scam citizen" as if that were the largest problem. Ive always thought the actual largest threat to the game wasnt building the game... it was balencing it to make it fun. All the tech... giant world... server meshing.... fleets.... is kind of pointless if none of it is fun.
I miss the old pre 3.0 flight model. Ships felt like precision instruments and high skill fights came down to who could ride the line before blacking out. The fights were close nose to nose between 50 and 100m, each ship fighting for just the right angle.
This is a great video. In particular, as you say, it is such a shame since they can have it all, with 3-DOF in atmo and 6-DOF in space. Give us a real space sim and let us feel the difference between atmo and space to it's full extent!
I want 6 dof and high speed space fighting. They didn’t need to make master modes. They just needed to rebalance ship weapons, and armor. And then 90% of the issues in the game’s combat would be solved. They kind of just attacked the problem from the wrong end.
All they needed to do was rebalance the ship weapons a gladius couldn’t take one two full constellations simultaneously and then make it so that turrets were move effective against light fighters.
Just because the skill ceiling is high, doesn’t mean that the combat is bad. The skill ceiling is high for a lot of games, like dota or counterstrike. But a ton of people still play them even though they’re hard mechanically because the challenge is really rewarding.
They should just go back to the previous flight model and rebalance weapons.
You couldn’t make turrets more effective against light fighters because the fighters were too agile and fast relative to the projectile speed and server/client response time. That is one of the reasons they slowed combat down.
Without MM there’s a lot more that would have to change than weapon rebalancing and armor. Huge skill gap in games like CS is still fine, because the ttk is short. It’s hard to master, but even a noob CAN kill a good player. A noob killing a good pilot in the old SC flight model is unheard of. The ttk is longer, allowing a good player to escape even the worst situations.
My stance has always been get the physics right, get it as realistic as possible within game design parameters and let the players figure out what's the best flight strategy. Personally I'd love a full newtonian model without speed limits outside of atmospheric friction but I know I'm in the minority and that leaves things less accessible.
I agree with you, I also specifically really want inherited momentum / relative speed because it would allow snubs and such to deploy from a carrier at speed. Trying to take a Fury out of a moving Corsair is death. The transition from ship to space is just actually a fucking barrier between realities.
I've never been an ace PvPer by any stretch of the imagination, but everything you said here resonated with me so, so much. I've been involved with this game for 10+ years now because I thought it was going to be an authentic - and I love that word that you used, authentic - space simulation game. Maybe not a brutally realistic take on space combat like The Expanse, but still done with a focus on believability/authenticity. BSG is a fantastic example of what I mean.
I truly thought that most of Star Citizen's backers were on the same page about that. It's only (relatively) recently that I've encountered lots of people arguing in favor of a "WWII planes in space" style of gameplay. These people often use the argument that Chris Roberts made Wing Commander and therefore Star Citizen's combat will be the same. And it may be similar to an extent, but I was always under the impression that Star Citizen's combat would be more than Wing Commander with modern graphics.
Maybe an influx of new fans has made the community and devs lose touch with what this game was supposed to be, or maybe I've just been out of touch, I truly don't know. All I do know is that I have always enjoyed playing this game, at least for a little while every patch, all the way back since the DFM days. But since MM came out I just can't find any enjoyment with it. I've tried doing other gameplay loops besides space combat, but if the core of the game is flying your ship, and that feels bad.... what is the point?
what made the 3.22 model so fun was that you knew you could do more, like there was always something to improve on or learn or do differently and a lot of the engagements felt different from each other because there were more valid maneuvering options and decisions. Different pilots flew differently. Combat in MM right now is copy and paste, every engagement is the same engagement.
Good one
@Luffy-rf1ekhow can one be bad at MM? I don’t think I’ve played an easier game.
@luffy0rf1ek So you joined with this latest Free Fly then. Got it.
The game feels like it has nothing to work towards anymore.
The crazy thing is the game can be both since it has both space and atmospheric flight, each should be very different.
Forget being planes in space, be 3DOF planes in atmo and 6DOF in space.
I don't wanna fly my ship like a plane. At the end of the day I'm just having way less fun in this patch than I've had in the past. It really bums me out.
Been playing for 3 years, poured a decent amount of money into it. Came for the flight model and now I've played 8 hours of 3.23 testing MM and I've decided to quit until something changes. Didn't even log in for invictus nor did I buy anything like I wanted. Its just sad
That sucks becuase they had the most successful Invictus than all previous years
same reason...
But unfortunately, according to my observations, intuition and trends, it will all come down to the most primitive arcade game. Because people (humanity) are overwhelmingly degraded (this is solely my opinion and observation). And on the other hand, it brings a lot of money to populists. And unfortunately, oddly enough, Star Citizen is about money and promises of a happy tomorrow. So my hopes for the best are illusory...
@@dipperspace The robots are coming
Dado
Feel the same Bro
Quitters are weak. You haven't even spent time in the game to get good keybindings worked out. Pathetic.
The new "Flight" model has no flight. I feel like I'm in a flying saucer just kind of hovering and pointing where I go. Everything is just aiming and going or aiming and shooting. There's no thought to it.
I always thought the Arrow Trailer was funny when the released it. We were never able to really pull off that kind of maneuver. It also feels like that is how Chris envisioned how the combat would be like. Which if it was and we could pull cool stuff off like that. It would be kinda fun in my opinion!
They are having us player test/refine the cinematic pve focused flight model for the Squadron 42 in the PU. Avenger comes so very close to answering his own question in this video. It all adds up to this conclusion.
The 6DoF BSG / Expanse flight model was what I signed up for. They can give us a decent atmospheric flight model that emphasises flight control surfaces and full 6DoF space flight which is the best of all worlds rather than the current MM which is just the worst... it feels like a space FPS. Soon as someone gets a bead on you, you're pretty much screwed.
One thing I think they could do is make manoeuvring deltaV-limited: there is so much scope for thrusters that behave in different ways... efficiency (specific impulse), duration of 'available' thrust (bit like afterburner), 'peak' sustainable thrust, a range of acceleration and jerk profiles, different thrusters ratings on different axes, rates of recharge, reaction mass consumption rates... they can create a lot of variation but it all involves having a reasonably high cap on the velocity that allows those variants to actually make a difference.
I think the Elite Dangerous flight model is superior to Star Citizen. In theory it's 6DOF, but the strafing thrusters are fairly weak and if you turn off flight assist to face off your flight vector, you lose rotation stabilizing. The makes it MUCH more difficult to fly with flight assist off so most people fly as a 3DOF game. This gives the nose to tail combat where strafing is often used to widen or narrow your turn radius to help align your guns or evade incoming fire.
It certainly feels a lot better than what we are forced to use now in MM. Well, except for the unfair disadvantage of the 'blue zone' nonsense where your ship rotates like a snail at low speeds, except when you turn flight assist off. That whole blue zone thing is also trying to force atmospheric flight behavior on a space game
This was my point. Strafe is causing the headaches. Reduce the effectiveness of strafe and combat becomes more manageable as a modern day jet dogfighter. Keep strafe in you either have face to face at slow speeds or you go back to jousting.
I love elite's flight model.
For me the real endgame of ED wasn't the cutters and corvettes, it was gitting gud with the smallest ships with FA off... the fact that it's so hard for a while makes it incredibly satistying once your 6dof muscle memory 'clicks', contolling both attitude and translation smoothly. I would love if SC gave us the option to turn rotational stabilising off, for us weirdos who enjoy that. Racing would be especially cool with only 'manual' thruster control i.e. FA off (in SC would be decoupled + no attitude/rotation stabilising)
Agree. 6DOF is a necessity in a SciFi simulation.
This video should be mandatory viewing for all CIG staff.
6 DoF, but with better ship to ship tuning. Also, rear thrust was never felt big compared to the 5 other directional thrusts. Make it like the Expanse and flip 180 to slow down.
I just want to go back to 3.22.
Better yet, go back to 3.13, when outfitting a ship actually mattered and required game knowledge and skill with specific systems.
Every step has been a reduction in weapon/ship/flight diversity, and now we're to the point there's effectively a handful of reskinned ships and weapons.
3.14 tunings brought back angular fighting though. Variety is good, but getting position is more critical IMO.
Nah go further back 2.63, where Missiles and Medium fighters were at their apex.
I still think shields should block ALL damage, and the aim is to get them down and THEN can do dmg vs hull and penetrate (only with ballistics) and can damage components. Also lasers better vs shields than ballistics otherwise ballistics have no downside (except ammo limit).
And more shield management options.
And a very clear direct indicator when you're being shot at.
Nail on the head so far, I'm 8:30 minutes in - taking the words out of my mouth!
Personally, I lean towards the 6doF land, coming from an older 6doF game that I really loved (and continually try to get people to play) - I didn't play SWS's or ED because of the feel, Star Citizen at the time I got it felt more true to 6doF and that's one of the reasons I didn't ever play ED or SWS's. Just a personal preference.
Honestly, BSG is so cinematic as well - I think 6doF can be as cinematic.
Will edit this more as I watch
14:20 - yes!
Really liking this - 100% spot on.
16:30 - yes! 6doF has its problems, and it *is* rare which makes it very foreign, which also makes it hard to pick up. For probably 99% of people, its a new way of thinking of things. Even if you remove trichording and 45's - its still going to be hard to pickup.
But its deep, and rewarding, and unique when you learn it. Really spot on insights I think sir.
19:13 - ooo, now it gets interesting !
20:04 - jousting??? Really? The new FM has more jousting. Not really as far of distances - like the jousts are tighter, but its really *really* easy to just blow through things and because our backstrafe is nerfed (because backstrafe is evil of course!) we can't catch or properly counter blow-throughs (jousts).
At least in 3.22 you could:
1. Identify a jousty guy
2. Wait for him to begin a joust
3. Start moving backwards at speed
4. Wait
5. Oops now he's saddled and completely fucked. GG
21:00 - yes LMAO. This "jousting" thing and "backstrafing" thing - in 3.22 these were only ever an issue if you were new IMO. Annoying - yes. Effective? Only sometimes. I'm sure you'll agree, 99% of the time its just way better in 3.22 to push and get close instead of backstrafe or joust.
29:30 - YES. Wish I could upvote this video twice.
I really thought I'd like MM, on paper some of the things were similar to that older 6doF I played, but playing it now I really miss 3.22 and previous patches.
Not yet an SC player, but yeah bang on, Elite has 6Dof and despite its issues, the flight model is the best part of the game. SC should absolutely bring the fluidity and depth of 6DoF to bear because its a much more rich environment to profit from it
I feel like a high barrier to entry isn't so bad when you consider there's many styles of play that don't depend on you being a fighter pilot. It allows for people to specialize in certain gameplay loops and collaborate with people who have other skills.
i.e. you could be a scrapper and want some defense from pilots who want to play security
Re: fighter pilots and high barriers... Fighter pilots are held up as being the ultimate pilot: it's _supposed_ to be hard! If you want an easy time flying, you want to be a commercial pilot - transporting passengers or freight, not exchanging weapon fire.
@@CyberiusTIt is a game. Not something that should require something on the order of actual school to play.
@@brad433 Oh, it is is it? I was under the impression they were aiming more for "simulator" than "game". They're going to some baffling lengths for realism if realism is not the goal.
That whole immersion thing is reliant upon verisimilitude - your brain not suddenly objecting loudly because what you're experiencing is very much _not_ what you know actually happens. Eg: Physicalised cargo, rather than magic pockets with infinite capacity.
You know full well that fighter pilots are the "Best of the best of the best. Sir!" and if you're able to phone it in whilst half drunk, you're not going to enjoy it for long.
@@CyberiusT Yeah it is. None of these ships are of a design even remotely influenced by actual physics. You’re eating and loading cargo to convey that you live in this world, but this world’s physics has never been very realistic and never will be. I guess your brain never objected to disabled ships and debris coming to a stop on their own in space?
The combat system will be whatever helps the game appeal to the most people, and function well within the limits of netcode, not some “simulation” that never really existed, so a hardcore community can make combat pointless to anyone without the time to dedicate to space nerd Top Gun on TH-cam.
Whatever they have to do to prevent that is what they need to do, and ultimately prevent such a wide skill gap or difference of capability from unintuitive systems. MM is a step in the right direction and hopefully the beginning of the end of the light fighter meta, in favor of differentiation, class counters and team play. I don’t even care how they get there so long as they get there.
You’re not the best of the best. You’re a guy playing a video game fantasizing about being a space fighter pilot, just like the less sweaty guy. If your game requires a training program to have any shot of defending yourself, and even experienced players often cant discern what’s gone wrong, you’re doing something wrong as a game developer. Combat should not be frustrating and obtuse to new players.
As much as it pains me to say that, but I agree with you.
I played SpaceSims from childhood and also became a VERY skilled WW2 plane pilot in recent years. And I must say that nothing beats the elegance of that WW2 flight model. But it is not just 3DOF - there is also an definitive up and down and with that comes 9,81m/s² acceleration - or 1G - constantly pulling you down and influencing energy state. The constrictions resulting from plane geometry and Gs make for a very elegant flight model that allows you to apply tons of skill, but at the same time limit pilots to what they can do. Flying up means they slow down and vice versa, they can do a lot of maneuvres but they cannot change their energy state abruptly - thus there is always a level of predicatibility that just isn't in 3DOF-in-space and even less in 6DOF.
As an experienced WW2 pilot, there just is no jousting. You do not fly straight towards a target, pot shots are dangerous and very unreliable, instead you merge, but once merged the actual fight for positioning starts, and there is no way for one party or another to just "boost out" and force a complete reset of the tactical situation. Equivalent would be to dive away, but it doesn't immediately remove you from danger nor does it mean you can't be chased (Depending on planes specs).
Combat in WW2 has nothing to do with firepower and armor, and everything to do with flying maneuvers and tactics. The actual battle is the battle for position, where skill is everything. You can have the largest calibre weapons, with an enemy on your 6 they will not do you any good. And all the guy on your 6 needs is really just some machine gun. In fact, heavy weapons weigh you down, decreasing your effectiveness as a dogfighter! (But increasing your effectiveness against larger planes than your own, where you don't need as much maneuvrability to win the positioning fight).
After the positioning fight, pulling the trigger is really more of a formality and gunnery skill is quite quickly developed compared to the other skills necessary.
The other thing is the disparity between offensive and defensive technology. In WW2, a single gun burst can bring down a fighter and even a bomber. This makes for an extremely elegant system. You would develop very specific tactics on how to engage a bomber for example, because even 1 bullet from a turret could disable your plane, take it out or straight up kill you. But those tactics only worked because the bombers couldn't just maneuvre around wildly to change their firing solution on you or evade.
But we mostly don't want fast kills in SC, especially for larger ships, where an entire crew shouldn't be taken out of the game from one gun run and "death of a spaceman" is a legitimate thing. Now it is a bit unintuitive, but shields effectively negating pot shots are a good thing here, because this focuses the tactics back on proper maneuvering, acquiring a firing solution where you can actually dish out your full damage potential to make a kill.
Now with 3DOF-in-space, all of the above doesn't apply anymore. The fight for position is effectively nonexistent, because at any point in time a pilot can just turn around ("Fly backwards") and bring their guns on you. It eliminates the entire "dance". Now we need 3DOF to make the game accessible at all for beginners. To this end, there are flight assists essentially breaking 6DOF down into 3DOF (with some elements remaining like strafing to make landings easier etc., but we're talking combat so I'll focus on that.)
Also, your point "why not both - 3DOF in atmos and 6DOF in space" - I really love that idea. It would make for so much depth, players can chose their feelgood variant and force fights there, beginners will also first fly in atmos and thus have it easier.
Now what does that mean for SC and MM? I tested master modes extensively both in AC pre-patch and now in the PU. Here's my ideas:
-Boost mechanic is super annoying to use. I would rather have it removed or change it to fixed one-click power surge as in Elite: Dangerous.
-I have a hard time identifying flight maneuvers and tactics that bring any actual benefit.
-Especially so with anything larger than a small fighter. You are too slow to evade anything and can't fight for control. It is a weird state of trying to get guns on whilst trying to kite. You are maneuvering heavily against the sluggishness with a ship obviously not designed to be maneuvered like this.
-Makes it hard to hit anything above your size with cutlass and larger. Since you can't fight for position, it becomes mostly a damage race.
However the old model was far from perfect as well. As a lifelong experienced PVP pilot (Elite Dangerous, War Thunder Sim. Mode (VR), Space Games Back until XwingVSTiefighter) it took me 3 months of intensive learning, including tutoring videos, to even become vaguely competent - and still didn't really have a chance against dedicated experienced PVPers. I can only imagine what that must feel like to someone not as experienced as me. While I love the learning part, even over long stretches, there needs to be more payout from progressing along the route.
There is a lot of players not so much interested in PVP or combat. They want to fly their space trucks about, but they also need to feel that they have a chance to defend themselves against PVPers with their turrets or whatnot...because if that doesn't work, why have them in the first place?
I think we could draw more inspiration from Elite: Dangerous. The PVP combat FM isn't perfect there and has led to certain meta movements and loadouts as well, but it does a better job when it comes to fight for position and predictability.
The way ships are designed in SC can't be changed and they are geometrically designed with more of a 3DOF model in mind. (Guns facing forwards, main engines pushing forward). Taking that into account it makes a lot of sense to me that we have asymmetrical thruster power and should keep with that in order to somewhat break true 6DOF down into more of a hybrid.
The way the tunings are right now however, doesn't really feel good in any way. Space Drag is very stupid.
It is a tough nut to crack and we need to appreciate that, but I feel that CIG does not have the necessary amount of flight experience and understanding amongst their staff right now. Ultimately it comes from SC's vision being just too broad. It wants to achieve being an MMO, an RPG, a flight combat sim, space trucking sim etc. All of these however have very specific requirements that partly overlap and conflict with each other. So as painful as it is, in order to fit the vision combat can simply not be overly complex or in a way that conflicts with other vision goals.
The problem with Star Citizen's combat model is that CIG keeps trying to develop a resource management game rather than a sim or even just a very fun sci-fi game with space and ground elements.
What MMO isn't ultimately a resource management game at heart? This argument doesn't make sense to me. If you just want a fun sci-fi game with space and ground elements, that's s42.
probably has to do with them thinking about components (engineering gameplay) and ways to make ship systems working at less than 100% affect combat.
@@TheRedEyeChannel My argument doesn't make sense to you because you're purposefully conflating "a resource management game" with "a game with resource management elements".
Your response shifts the discussion away from Star Citizen's combat model to MMOs in general, which isn't directly addressing the specific issue I raised about Star Citizen's combat model. You're comparing Star Citizen's combat model to other MMOs, suggesting that resource management is inherent in all MMOs. While resource management is indeed a common aspect of many MMOs in general, that doesn't automatically justify or explain the design choice CIG has made for SC's combat model.
Your argument lacks any direct connection to the original issue that's being discussed here; it's a false analogy. But you know that, because the end of your counter argument is indicative of someone who is being intentionally disingenuous.
@@thedoctrinetv You're the one that are arguing the focus of resource management is what's keeping the flight model from being good. As such, I'm commenting on your stance and not making a new direct connection as you are saying. Fact is, SC, as an MMO has multiple facets to it, both flight model, and resource management, included. The flight model is a smaller part of the whole whereas the resource management takes up a bigger amount of resources to develop. Hence, your argument doesn't make sense. Not only because they aren't losing resources by putting due focus, but because the demands of the MMO neccesitates that they prioritize the resource mangement.
@@TheRedEyeChannel I appreciate your perspective on the broader context of Star Citizen as an MMO. However, my core issue with your last response lies in the fact that you're now denying the antecedent of your false analogy while STILL perpetuating your original false analogy.
You continue to attempt to justify Star Citizen’s overly-resource-management-focused combat model by comparing it to other MMOs, suggesting that resource management is inherent in all MMOs. However, this continues to sidestep the specific concern raised here about Star Citizen’s combat mechanics. While resource management is essential, it shouldn’t overshadow the core gameplay experience. And that's the problem--the core first-person experience, which includes the combat model, is being overshadowed by resource management.
I personally will prefer a 6DF gameplay, it's more difficult to master, but more reallistic for a space game.
The problem CIG is facing may be that 6DF game will atract less new players, as it's less intuitive and hard to learn.
_GOD_ I miss the old flight model combat.
It truly was special and the comparison to BSG is spot on. Star Wars combat really is very simplistic and childish
Star Citizen still does not have the entire flight model. Control surfaces are missing and thrusters are not tuned yet.
And yet that's not what is being argued, and thous things can't change mechanical issues like nav mode ect
Your perspective is interesting, as usual. Your comment about Multiplayer vs Solo Play, hit a nerve for me. I prefer a more PvE and Solo play style, with the odd time dipping into PvP and crewing up. To me, and I think other PvE / Solo players, MM feels punishing to us over PvP players. Systems being taken away in NAV mode is a terrible design choice. Weapons, fine, but shields is totally ridiculous. Simple scenario, I'm running one of these new cargo missions. PvP or Pirate players camp the OM's at mission destinations. I drop out of quantum, have no shields, and get shredded in seconds before I even have a chance to defend myself, or rabbit. Even in a ship like the C2, I am going to get trashed by a couple of light fighters in this scenario. That is punishing to any PvE or Solo, or even non combat players. The reality is that there are several non combat play loops in cargo, mining, and exploration. Punishing those players with a focus on combat is terrible. Don't bother with "get escorts", or "git gud", or whatever BS excuse. Cargo, mining and exploration are legitimate play loops being absolutely ruined by the constant push to combat and piracy. MM makes those difficult scenarios near impossible for the non combat players. I expect pirates and griefers are loving MM, since it makes it so easy to get players when they drop out of quantum now.
And what does your alternative look like? Always being able to QT away unscathed? How should the game allow you to properly defend from pirates solo if not crewing up with gunners or hiring escorts? And if you can escape so easily, what’s the point of piracy at all?
But besides this, we tested this in my org for quite awhile. If the attackers don’t have a QED, our solo space truckers still escape every time in space, they tank damage and jump away seconds later. If they have a QED, then it’s no different than before MM. You’re toast if you’re solo. And in Atmosphere it’s the same thing. If you can’t QT you’re probably dead, but pirates are gonna want to take you in space not atmo. There’s less incentive for them if you fall to the ground and explode.
Solos should still have risks right?
I think it’d be better if they fix the trade system. You shouldn’t be buying X million in cargo with your own money. I mean you can, but if you get pirated you deserve the big loss that would entail if you did nothing to protect it. There should be hauling contracts you can take if you don’t want that risk. You get pirated and maybe your loss is some amount you put down for the contract and a hit to reputation. And then figuring out how to prevent players from cooperatively pirating.
They HAVE made a choice.
A lot of people just dont like it.
agreed on the solutions at the end for sure. I really miss energy and momentum cancelling as part of dogfighting
I just hope they can look past Squadron 42 and let Star Citizen have it's original flight model back. But since Squadron 42 is in polishing state now and the ships are very much linked between these two games, i have high doubts they will do anything to change this sadly. Hope i'm wrong. Would love another interview with A1 and Yogi on this, bring on Splen as well from the racing side of things.
Yogi and Chris' pride stands in the way. They are arrogant. I have never wanted to play less than now.
feel the same way. It looks like Yogi is gonna force MM to happen regardless it's becoming more and more apparent that it's never gonna work well. I wish they would just stop wasting all the time and resources on it. jmo though
Most of the developers are treating backers as some sort of "enemy" standing in the way of their "vision." Problem is this new vision they have doesn't match what they sold us.
I am not even a PvP-er and I dislike Master Modes. I feel like I have so much less freedom than I do now.
It feels like they let one guy just do whatever he wanted and then just released it.
Master Modes feels arbitrary, and the old one felt fine to me.
Good go play something else
@@urfavspacecadet no friends havin ass
I totally agree with you A1. I've played about 5 years...at least every week. This current 'Try' is a grasp at equalizing the ships/players in the game.
ALL ships DO NOT need to be viable against others. Use MM for quantum travel only...and maybe the top 10% of speed. You got this one stop on. Great job!
A game for everyone is a game for no-one
3DOF game would be a massive promise break, huge amounts of anger if they went down this road.
CIG - How to throw the baby out with the bathwater...
Current model (3.23) is the worst flight experience in this games history. Feels like Im flying a WW1 fighter that needs a tune up. Some of the aspects of MM are fine but need tweaks, shields shouldnt just drop when switched. In addition what is needed is to get away from relying solely on ship HP and introduce armor, a light fighter should never be able to take out a cap ship no matter how long it spends shooting it. I hope CiG is watching this they really need to get it together.
Yes.
I think boost should be more of a special trump card rather than a constant thing, sort of like having a cooldown that can be used for an defensive or offensive clutch moment. I also think that fighters should be far faster than larger ships, but higher grade weapons should come with higher projectile velocity.
I gotta be honest: I'm really enjoying Master Modes. It does feel a lot more fleshed out than the other flight models. That is pure subjective opinion. And other opinions on this are absolutely valid as well, of course.
Master modes definitely needs more balancing. Some ships needs their speeds adjusted (looking at you Hurricane), but overall, I like it much more than the 3.22 flightmodel.
The previous flight model was hugely inaccesible for the common player. The player that wasnt able to train every day. The player who maybe had only an hour to themselves every day. Does that mean that MM values skill less than the 3.22 flightmodel? Maybe. I'm not sure on that. I do think the skill floor was a bit too high on the 3.22 model tho.
Typical PvP fights in the verse way too often just evolved in jousting and passing each other at high speeds, firing for maybe a sec before being out of range again. With MM, it feels like a person has to commit to the fight. Certain ships are still able to effectively disengage, which is why the Bucc is so strong atm, but I think MM is a good idea overall - it just needs more work. The speed limitations are a good idea to bring dogfights closer together, it just needs more fine tuning. What type of tuning is needed exactly? Hell nah, dunno. I'm not a game designer.
Edit: (I wrote the comment while watching before A1 adressed jousting) I see the point A1 is making to jousting in MM, but so far, it feels like there is a lot less jousting in MM so far. But granted, I'm not playing AC, only the PvP in the wild.
I think increasing the SCM speed a bit would be a good thing. Let them cook
Typical PVP looked like that because nobody told people not to constantly hold W to get super fast and extremely linear. Now the SCM speed wall is preventing that for you. An hour a day could have gotten you far in the old flight model. You would have just needed a bit of guidance and that's mainly where the game failed.
old flight model was not that hard to master. YOu just needed to practice. JUst like Pilots in Real Life.... You cant just get in a plane and fly.... PIlot = STUDENT...... THis is the issue.... I have my Light sport aircraft endorsement. Took over 45 hours of training and flying and applying my self to learn to fly....> The issue is people do not want to put the work in to practice their Craft... No throttle managment , Hell CIG even added 2 new hand holding settings.... Precision landing mode, and Gravity Compensator .... MORE HAND HOLDING settings. taking even the basics risks of flying out of the hands of the pilot so you dont have to practice landings. or worry about up strafe if your in decoupled mode in a gravity well. DO you want to play a game where the basic risks of FLIGHT are not even risks anymore..... ?
@@FathersGame2-zi5wv SC, in the end, is still a game. Not real life. Not everybody has that kind of time just to learn how to fly a ship. A lot of people work, have families, etc. A lot of people have only an hour a day for themselves. Not everybody wants to spend that on training for a game.
@Jaeih then alot of people are going to have a cold awakening. It's going to take you a hour to load your cargo and get into space. SC has tons of time sinks. I'm a father of 2 girls. 4 and 6. A husband . People sc isn't a game that u can get anything done in a hour. Tired of the excuse of limited game time.
Maybe WWII plane shooters is more your thing than space? It's stupid to make space flight be like atmospheric flight because it's "more accessible". if people want "accessible" games, then go play an accessible game. Not a space flight combat game where you need to learn 6dof and all it entails.
Massively reducing maneuvering-thruster ability would be a good start. But the issue with your analysis is that we really don't want Expanse style gameplay. That's the opposite of close space combat. Galactica style gameplay is good, but the reason it works in the show is that the maneuvering thrusters have enough power to rotate the ship, NOT enough to strafe. That's what we should try with MM.... Turn down the strength on those maneuvering thrusters wasaaay down.. Keep speeds slow so combat is close and visually cool. Win win.
I like that with master modes you aren’t running with weapons and shields on all the time. If we can easily see what mode people are in, it’ll help show intent, which is important IMO. I DON’T like their implementation though. It’s just too nonsense. Especially the braking when you turn off boost.
its hard to do but you can see their EM signature change when switching mode.
Hard to pay attention to while in combat
You actually can't see what mode other people are in at all in 3.23. You can only see whether their shields are down, which can easily be achieved by pressing the O key in SCM Gun mode as well.
I do like the mechanism in Elite Dangerous where you have to physically deploy your weapons. Anyone who has you targeted will get a audio warning when that happens
I played a game with 6DOF in 2001. There all this was already well established. Shiptypes were either jousters or circlers. The only limits were max speed and pretty similar manouvering thrusters.
The best circlers are the more manouverable ships, and the slower a ship manouvers the heavier you force it into jousting.
If CIG wants less jousting they need to make the ship much more agile.
To be fair jousting in the 3 degree only really happens at the inital merge. All the clips showing it were the start of the fight. Once engaged it almost never happens again. Its just in 6dof it happens again.... and again... and again.
That’s not true, if we joust on the first pass and I don’t like where my shields are at I boost or Nav away. Then turn and joust again and again. I see this all the time in AC. The only time you don’t joust is if both players want the duel. Due to MM jousting is more common and easier to do.
@@scriptoris1947 you seem to be talking in the 6 degree of freedom style... I specifically said 3dof.
@@scriptoris1947 I'm not sure what your arguing. .. it looks like you literally restated what I said.
@@tcunero So in current MM it’s a lot more akin to 3DF if you want to maximize movement you do not use multi strife movements like we did in the last model a much more 6DF model. The game has 6DF in MM but the other thrusters do so little I don’t even use them, to maximize your movement you just focus on the 3DF In current MM. your statement was jousting only happens in 6DF not 3DF I’m saying that’s not true it still happens in 3DF I would argue more now.
@@scriptoris1947 Ahh so I think I see where the misunderstanding is. I was only referring to true 3df, and as you stated (and also stated in the video) MM is closer to 3df but definitely not 3df, it is a weird hybrid (i would say 4df). Real 3df, is what I was talking about and is what all modern atmospheric flight is. It is what I was referring when the vid shows all the examples of star wars flight, its based on 3df.
If MM truly functioned like 3df you would never get the jousting (besides the first pass, like I stated).
6DOF in space and 3DOF in atmos for ships designed to fly well in atmosphere
Ok, 3.22 was a terrible flight model. With that flight model, you wouldn't get the mean group of players. If you have a game that caters only to hard core you will not have a game that lasts. I wish you would quit trying to cause a division in the community and have constructive feedback. Constantly saying that CIG is incompetent and the game sucks is not getting you anywhere and it's causing people to lose a ton of respect for you.
You know where the game is going, the new flight model just came out and was rushed. They are working on it. WE DO NOT NEED MORE SPEED. things are going to break before they get better, and forcing them to do what you want is not what a lot of other people want. It's finally nice to struggle against NPC's and have to make choices on what to take to battle.
The game now is way way way more positional than ever before. What needs balancing are all the weapons. This will come with time. They need to get all the features in then they can focus on balancing. Other wise what they do now can break the game later. So let them do their job and wait till it is all in, then give constructive criticism.
Don't be salty. I've been playing the game since 2013, and I too have gone through all the iterations. 3.23 feels the best and it will only get better.
👍
3.22 flight model wasn't good. But neither is MM. I don't think A1 is losing any respect at all actully.
when CR decided to hand the reins over to Rich change was inevitable
Game is super unfun right now. Fly an arrow in AC - hornet 2 shots you, while going around you 3 times.
Ya. I’m pretty annoyed.
And so the age of the arrow ended, so begins the era of the hornet
Hi Avenger. I just wanted to give you kudos for 99% of what you said in your video and I absolutely agree. BUT! You lost me when you said Star Citizen should cater more to multiplayer than to singleplayer. If you remember the planned NPC to player ratio of 9 to 1, then Star Citizen will literally be a PvEvP MMO, and historically the majority of the overall playerbase is playing MMOs solo for the majority of the time, just because you cannot always assemble a large enough group that has the time at the same time or wants to do the same things at the same time. So, in my opinion the most important step is to make the game a fun solo playable experience, and if that works well, THEN make it playable multiplayer. Otherwise SC will end up being a niche game for only enthusiasts, and nothing for people who have a day job other than making videos about games. No offense - as I said I agree with 99% of what you said and Kudos for the research you did. Awesome video!
Them trying to cater to both 3DOF and 6DOF is representative of the game in general - trying to include everything / cater to everyone which ultimately results in a poorer experience for all
As he touched on at the end they can have their cake and eat it too.
In atmo combat is perfect for 3DOF, lean into that and develop around it.
Space needs to be tuned more like 3.22 with the best parts off MM added in
Then there is REAL separation between ships and player skills, you could be an Ace in atmo with a Raven but outclassed if the fight is pulled into space
From their trailers, the way ships are designed and the way the devs talk, I think CIG's vision about what combat in Star Citizen should be like has always been 3 DOF. Problem is, during the original Kickstarter campaign they promised 6 DOF, and I think they did that without fully realizing the implications. The original Kickstarter campaign in general was filled with wildly unrealistic things and promises, so I don't think Chris Roberts or whoever was responsible for it really thought it through. So now CIG is basically stuck trying to realize their 3 DOF vision without breaking their 6 DOF promise.
Personally, I think CIG should just have the courage to stand up and admit that 6 DOF isn't working out for them and admit that they overpromised. Making a good 6 DOF game is difficult, and making one that is both fun and accessible to new and casual players, and that feels cinematic on top of that feels extremely difficult if not impossible. Like there is no way you are ever going to make a fast-paced Star Wars-style chase combat happen in 6 DOF. Losing 6 DOF is imho only a small price to pay if we get an actually good, cinematic flight model in return. Do you lose some depth? Perhaps. But as a veteran of IL-2 Sturmovik I can say that there can be a ton of depth in a 3 DOF game as well.
Alternatively, they could abandon their vision of Star Wars-style combat and fully lean into the 6 DOF. Having played a lot of 6 DOF space sims (primarily the X Series and Elite), I am not sure if 6 DOF is really more unique than 3 DOF, but I do fully agree that having 6 DOF feels a lot more 'immersive' in a space sim. However, fully embracing 6 DOF would probably require a lot of reworks to some ships (because let's face it, a lot of ships have turret, weapon and cockpit/bridge placements that make no sense in 6 DOF) and it would make the combat (especially PvP) a lot less accessible to new players since 6 DOF dogfighting is a lot more complex to learn than 3 DOF dogfighting, so you'd always get this massive skill gap between older, more experienced players and new players that discourages most new players from even trying to learn the system.
Either way, I hope CIG cuts their losses and just chooses one system or the other. Because I agree that with the current approach, it is just going to be really hard to make a flight model that is really good and satisfying.
I've listened to your position on MMs many times now and I always find myself disagreeing with you. Your reasoning always seems to come down to that you just want to go fast again. For example. You explain the difference between 3dof and 6dof and say that what we have now is in fact 6dof but it's "fake" or "isn't impactful" because you can't do anything with it and then explain that you can't move in all 6 dimensions fast enough to dodge projectiles due to your speed. Why is that a problem? The issue we had before was that speeds were as high as the skill ceiling, which is to say, so damned high that when at or close to skill cap no one could hit you. I believe that no matter how well you dodge it should be possible to hit you and I believe the side effect of that being that certain ships won't be viable or will have a disadvantage against certain other ships isn't a problem. Remember this isn't a free for all pvp experience which is where your biased opinion seems to come from. You can argue that your interceptors can control the battlefield all you want but that doesn't mean anything when the battlefield will realistically be centered around an objective (cargo ship for example) and the fact you need to make money. If you sit heavy fighters around an objective with that type of mindset the interceptors lose every day. You can run away all you want but that's a win to the defending party. Ironically it actually feels like to me that you are the one wanting an arcade experience rather than a sim. In a real sim people aren't just going 6v6 against each other just for the fun of it and I don't think the game should be balanced around that idea.
What do you mean why is that a problem? It either comes down to speed or agility. In the current mode you have neither.
You’re not fast enough to do anything, you’re not agile enough to dodge, which prevents any uniqueness and will make combat stale.
Even with 3 DoF, you can sacrifice speed to maintain agility or give up agility and use speed but that’s not possible. If this is the case it comes down to tankiness and dps which is again some stupid minmaxing crap and that’s horrendous. I’m appalled at your suggestion.
@@sydd6435 Then you need to get over yourself. The skill ceiling shouldn't be so high that you can't ever hit your target. The fact you are appalled at the mere suggestion that you shouldn't be able to speaks volumes about your character and to the fact that you prefer the games mechanics to serve your ego rather than the actual gameplay.
We can still have *some* nose-to-tail chasing in a 6DOF flight model. It can be setup to create that organically, where sometimes the right choice is to extend rather than continue to try to stay nose-to-nose and go toe-to-toe, leading to a chase.
You can see this sort of behavior in Subspace, where ships have ridiculously high rates of turn, in excess of 120 degrees/sec. Even then, oftentimes the right decision is to beam the bandit and counter maneuver or attempt to blow through, instead of trying to pivot to face them, because by the time you do, you're already on the losing end of a trade and you'll die.
I do not enjoy shooting at pixels whatsoever. 3.23 was a step in the right direction for me. Seeing what I'm shooting at and being able to target specific points on the ship is engaging.
I think the point is that when you are getting shot at, close up or far away, and can't do anything about it because you have no lateral strafe or speed isn't "fun". Yeah, maybe your PVE missions are more cinematic but the actual combat gameplay has suffered.
What game were you playing? Nothing was stopping you from getting close with the old flight model.
You could make old flight model also have closer fights. How? By reducing range of weapons. Tada! Simplest easiest fix ever.
I came back after 6months off and It felt like a massive down grade to flight. We need high skill ceiling, it keeps us striving to do better. Really hope they stay true to 6DOF or I wont be spending more money on the game :(
You miss one very critical point tho. SC is to be MMO .... its not a sim... so if the flight model is too hard you cant keep healthy MMO population.
I don't agree. Content is what keeps people playing and if you get better at mechanics you are enticed to comeback and improve your skills.
There are plenty of random and accessible games coming out every year. SC should not put itself in that category, else it will be spanked very badly.
Was the flight model too hard before Master Modes?
I swear more noobs are having trouble with figuring out Master Modes than they did with the “press W to go faster”, simple model of pre-3.23.
@@danielekirylo mmo doesnt spin around dog fights only.
@@LeftJoystick well this as we all know is just the base of the system, we dont have the full system yet, so it could be much better later on. And yes just W was boring.
You are more likely to find a fight now than in the previous model. 😅 sadly most will be the new overlord Hornets
I still remember how fun and joyous and snappy the flight model felt in the early days of Hangar Modules, where only AC existed.
There was something about it that just felt incredible. And I think it's also because 6 DOF was incredibly more prevalent then than now.
It stood out by how unique it felt, ships felt responsive and more appropriate to fly.
I'm not saying it was necessarily better or that we should just go back to it because I'm absolutely sure that system also had its flaws that I am not seeing through my rose tinted glasses, but every time I play my mind races to think back to those early days and I feel like some of the magic was lost.
I don't dislike what we have now either, but I feel it often fights you more than gives you a nice senese of space movement.
Yes the early flight models were awesome. Felt like your thrusters actually moved you and there was a sense of inertia. Now it's just an arcady plane.
If they wanted a realistic space sim they would have newtonian physics. Sadly they never wanted this.
on the other hand, I don't think modern networking and netcode can really send and receive that kind of packets and data that this would entail to a bunch of people in a big fight
Realistically, nobody wants true newtonian physics with unlimited speeds though
@@eavdmeer Realistically smart people want full Newtonian physics just to land on a rock with terrapin, take popcorn and have fun how every noob is crashing into station because they can't control their speed, hell yea that would be the best game ever, and there was only one game made with full Newtonian physics and was called Babylon5, you could go speed so fast without knowing what you died cause you crashed the asterodi and if you wanted fight you had to slow down, daaa logic, but only smart would survive, stupid would die and crash the ship I support such an a skill
@@yashik to be fair: people had no problems whatsoever crashing in to all sorts of things in 3.22. Every single noob would aim for the station at 1000 m/s, alias Mach 3 and then be surprised they couldn't stop in time.
Don't forget the Frontier game, the predecessor of Elite Dangerous. It had full Newtonian physics and you could even accelerate time. It was really not great to play, so physics within reason is probably the better approach
I love that you zeroed in on that clip where they were talking about trying to avoid jousting. When I saw that originally I was like.. did he just say the point was to AVOID jousting?!? The good news is that CIG will ABSOLUTELY keep working on this and make changes until they get "there". I truly believe that and I am so grateful for people like A1 who highlight what is NOT working in a respectable way so that we can all get there together. I ask CIG to please lean into the 6 degrees of freedom unique realism that will set this amazing universe apart from anything else (as A1 says in this video).
Thank you for putting so much work into summarizing all of these issues.
The situation of only being able to make meaningful maneuvers while boosting is what I noticed immediately in this newest model. It changed what used to be a flying game into what feels like a 6DOF FPS, and the boost gauge is now your stamina bar, which you have to use to be able to dodge.
And _thank you_ for pointing out that all this did was make jousting worse. They removed so much energy, all we're doing now is jousting in slow motion.
If they would change the Master Modes to be Atmo and Space modes I feel like they would make a “never seen before” game. The ship could put more power into the thrusters for 6 DOF in space mode and then focus on a 3 DOF flight model when in atmo mode. This way you change the clunky feel of Master Modes now and also make a game people enjoy. Then they’d just have to focus on giving people reason to fight in one or the other.